THE  LITTLE 

FIG  TREE  STORIES 


MARY 
HALLOCK 


HOUCHTON    AIFFLIN    (5.    CO. 


|)allorft  jF0ote. 


THE  CHOSEN  VALLEY.    A  Novel.     i6mo,  $1.25; 

paper,  50  cents. 
THE    LED-HORSE    CLAIM.      Illustrated.      i6mo, 

$1.25;  paper,  50  cents. 
JOHN    BODEWIN'S   TESTIMONY.      12010,  $1.50; 

paper,  50  cents. 
THE    LAST  ASSEMBLY   BALL,    and   THE    FATE 

OF  A  VOICE.     i6mo,  $1.25. 

IN   EXILE,  AND  OTHER   STORIES.     16010,^1.25. 
CCEUR   D'ALENE.    A  Novel.     i6mo,  $1.25. 
THE     CUP     OF     TREMBLING,      AND     OTHER 

STORIES.     i6mo,  $1.25. 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK. 


UP  THE   LADDER  TO  THE   SCUTTLE    (Page  ibo) 


THE 


LITTLE  FIG-TREE  STORIES 


BY 


MARY  HALLOCK  FOOTE 

I/ 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  BY  THE  AUTHOR 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

(iCfte  ttitiersi&c  press,  Cambridge 


COPYRIGHT,    1899,   BY  MARY   HALLOCK   FOOTE 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED. 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

These  stories  were  originally  published  in  the 
St.  Nicholas  Magazine,  and  are  reprinted  here  by 
kind  permission  of  the  Century  Company. 

The  profits  of  the  volume  are  dedicated  to  the 
Children's  Hospital  of  San  Francisco. 


M13689 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND  AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  .  1 

THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  "KEEP  UP"         .        .  17 

DREAM  HORSES 32 

AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 44 

A  VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 92 

NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON    -          ....  107 

THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM     .        .        .  120 

THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S          .        .        .  144 

THE  SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S        .  167 


•         . 
THE 

LITTLE  FIG-TREE  STORIES 


FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND  AND 
FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG 

THERE  is  a  garden  on  a  hill  slope  between 
the  snows  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  and  the  warm, 
rich  valleys  of  the  coast.  It  is  in  that  region 
of  Northern  California  where  the  pine  belt  and 
the  fruit  belt  interlace.  Both  pine  and  fruit 
trees  grow  in  that  mountain  garden,  and  there, 
in  the  new  moon  of  February,  six  young  Alm- 
ond trees  burst  into  flower. 

The  Peach  and  Plum  trees  in  the  upper  gar- 
den felt  a  glow  of  sympathy  with  their  forward 
sisters  of  the  south,  but  the  matronly  Cherry 
trees  shook  their  heads  at  such  an  untimely 
show  of  blossoms.  They  foresaw  the  trouble 
to  come. 

"  The  Almond  trees,"  they  said,  "  will  lose 
their  fruit  buds  this  year,  as  they  did  last  and 


2  FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND 

the  year  before.  Poor  things,  they  are  so  emo- 
tion al !  The  first  whisper  of  spring  that  wan- 
ders up  the  foothills  sets  them  all  aflame ;  out 
they  rush,  with  their  hearts  on  their  sleeves, 
for  the  frosts  to  peck  at.  But  what  can  one 
do  ?  If  you  try  to  reason  with  them,  (  Our 
parents  and  grandparents  always  bloomed  in 
February,'  they  will  tell  you,  '  and  they  did 
not  lose  their  fruit  buds.' ' 

"  The  Almond  trees  come  of  very  ancient 
stock,"  said  the  Normandy  Pear,  who  herself 
bore  one  of  the  oldest  names  in  France.  "  In- 
herited tendencies  are  strong  in  people  of  good 
blood.  One  of  their  ancestors,  I  have  heard, 
was  born  in  a  queen's  garden  in  Persia,  a  thou- 
sand years  ago  ;  and  beautiful  women,  whose 
faces  the  sun  never  shone  upon,  wore  its  blos- 
soms in  their  hair.  And  as  you  probably 
know,  their  forefathers  are  spoken  of  in  the 
Bible." 

"  A  number  of  persons,  my  dear,  are  spoken 
of  in  the  Bible  who  were  no  better  than  they 
should  be,"  said  the  eldest  Apple  tree.  "  We 
go  back  to  the  ( Mayflower,'  —  that  is  far 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  3 

enough  for  us ;  and  none  of  our  family  ever 
dreamed  of  putting  on  white  and  pink  in  Feb- 
ruary. It  would  be  flying  in  the  face  of  Pro- 
vidence." 

"  White  and  pink  are  for  Easter/'  said  the 
Pear  tree,  whose  grandparents  were  raised  in  a 
bishop's  garden.  "  I  should  not  wish  to  put 
my  blossoms  on  in  Lent." 

The  Apple  tree  straightened  herself  stiffly. 

"  We  do  not  keep  the  church  fasts  and 
feasts/'  she  said ;  "  but  every  one  knows  that 
faith  without  works  is  dead.  What  are  these 
vain  blossoms  that  we  put  forth  for  a  few  days 
in  the  spring,  without  the  harvest  that  comes 
after?" 

"  Now  the  Apple  tree  is  going  to  preach," 
said  the  light-hearted  Peach  tree,  stepping  on 
the  Plum  tree's  toes.  "  If  we  must  have  preach- 
ing, I  had  rather  listen  to  the  Pines.  They, 
at  least,  have  good  voices." 

"  Those  misguided  Almonds  are  putting  out 
all  their  strength  in  fleshly  flowers,"  the  Apple 
tree  continued  ;  "  but  how  when  the  gardener 
comes  to  look  for  his  crop  ?  We  all  know,  as 


4  FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND 

the  Cherry  trees  said,  what  happened  last  year 
and  the  year  before.  It  cannot  be  expected 
that  the  Master  of  the  Garden  will  have  pa- 
tience with  them  forever." 

"  The  Master  of  the  Garden  !  "  Four  young 
Fig  trees,  who  stood  apart  and  listened  in 
sorrowful  silence  to  this  talk  of  blossoms,  re- 
peated the  words  with  fear  and  trembling. 

"  How  long,  —  how  much  longer,"  —  they 
asked  themselves,  "  will  he  have  patience  with 
us?" 

It  was  now  the  third  spring  since  they  had 
been  planted,  but  not  one  of  the  four  sisters 
had  yet  produced  a  single  flower.  With  deep, 
shy  desire  they  longed  to  know  what  the 
flower  of  the  fig  might  be  like.  They  were 
all  of  one  age,  and  they  had  no  parent  tree 
to  tell  them.  They  knew  nothing  of  their 
own  nature  or  race  or  history.  Two  seasons 
in  succession,  a  strange,  distressful  change 
had  come  upon  them.  .  They  had  felt  the 
spring  thrills,  and  the  sap  mounting  in  their 
veins  ;  but  instead  of  breaking  out  into  pink 
and  white  flowers,  like  the  happy  trees  around 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  5 

them,  ugly  little  hard  green  knobs  had  crept 
out  of  their  tender  bark,  and  these  had  swollen 
and  increased  in  size  till  they  were  bowed 
with  the  burden  of  their  deformity.  Fruit 
this  could  not  be,  for  they  had  seen  that  fruit 
comes  from  a  flower,  and  no  sign  of  blos- 
som or  bud  had  ever  been  vouchsafed  them. 
When  inquisitive  hands  came  groping,  and 
feeling  of  the  purple  excrescences  upon  their 
limbs,  they  covered  them  up  in  shame  and 
tried  to  hide  them  with  their  broad  green 
leaves.  In  time  they  were  mercifully  eased 
of  this  affliction;  but  then  the  frosts  came, 
and  the  winter's  dull  suspense,  and  then  an- 
other spring's  awakening  to  hope  and  fear. 

"  Perhaps  we  were  not  old  enough  before," 
they  whispered  encouragement  to  one  another. 
"  Blossoms  no  doubt  are  a  great  responsi- 
bility. Had  we  had  them  earlier,  we  might 
have  been  foolish  and  brought  ourselves  to 
blame,  like  the  Almond  trees.  Let  us  not  be 
impatient;  the  sun  is  warm,  but  the  nights 
are  cold.  Do  not  despair,  dear  sisters;  we 
may  have  flowers  yet.  And  when  they  do 


6  FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND 

come,  no  doubt  they  will  be  fair  enough  to 
reward  us  for  our  long  waiting." 

They  passed  the  word  on  softly,  even  to  the 
littlest  Fig-tree  sister  that  stood  in  rocky 
ground  close  to  the  wall  that  shut  the  garden 
in  from  the  pine  wood  at  its  back.  The  Pines 
were  always  chanting  and  singing  anthems  in 
the  wood  ;  but  though  the  sound  was  beauti- 
ful, it  oppressed  the  little  Fig  tree,  and  filled 
her  with  melancholy.  Moreover,  it  was  very 
dry  in  the  ground  where  she  stood,  and  a  Fig 
tree  must  have  drink. 

"  Sisters,  I  am  very  thirsty ! "  she  cried. 
"  Have  you  a  little,  a  very  little  water  that 
you  could  spare  ?  " 

The  sister  Fig  trees  had  not  much  of  any- 
thing to  spare  ;  they  were  spreading  and  grow- 
ing fast,  and  their  own  soil  was  coarse  and 
stony.  The  water  that  had  so  delicious  a 
sound  in  coming  seemed  to  leak  away  before 
their  eager  rootlets  had  more  than  tasted  it ; 
still  they  would  have  shared  what  they  had, 
could  they  have  passed  it  to  their  weaker 
sister.  But  the  water  would  not  go  uphill ; 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  1 

it  ran  away  down,  instead,  and  the  Peach  and 
Plum  and  Pear  trees  grew  fat  with  what  the 
Fig  trees  lacked. 

"  Courage,  little  sister  !  "  they  called  to  the 
fainting  young  tree  by  the  wall.  "  The  morn- 
ing sun  is  strong,  but  soon  the  shadow  of  the 
wood  will  reach  us.  Cover  thy  face  and  keep 
a  good  heart.  When  our  turn  shall  come,  it 
will  be  thy  turn  too ;  one  of  us  will  not  bloom 
without  the  others." 

It  was  only  February,  and  the  Almond 
trees  stood  alone,  without  a  rival  in  their 
beauty.  They  stood  in  the  proudest  place  in 
the  garden,  in  full  view  both  from  the  road 
and  from  a  high  gallery  that  ran  across  the 
front  of  the  house  where  the  Master  of  the 
Garden  lived.  The  house  faced  the  west,  and 
whenever  the  people  came  out  to  look  at  the 
sunset  they  admired  the  beauty  of  the  Almond 
trees,  with  their  upright  shoots,  tipped  and 
starred  with  luminous  blossoms,  against  the 
deep,  rich  colors  in  the  west ;  and  when  the 
west  faded,  as  it  did  every  evening,  a  lamp  on 
a  high  post  by  the  gate,  bigger  and  brighter 


8  FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND 

than  the  brightest  star,  was  set  burning, — 
"for  what  purpose,"  thought  the  Almond 
trees,  "  but  to  show  our  beauty  in  the  night  ?  " 
So  they  watched  through  the  dark  hours,  and 
felt  the  intoxication  of  the  keen  light  upon 
them,  and  marveled  at  their  own  shadows  on 
the  grass. 

They  were  somewhat  troubled  because  so 
many  of  their  blossoms  were  being  picked; 
but  the  tree  that  stood  nearest  the  house 
windows  rose  on  tiptoe,  and  behold !  each 
gathered  spray  had  been  kept  for  especial 
honor.  Some  were  grouped  in  vases  in  the 
room,  or  massed  against  the  chimney-piece  ; 
others  were  set  in  a  silver  bowl  in  the  centre 
of  a  white  table,  under  a  shaded  lamp,  where 
a  circle  of  people  gazed  at  them,  and  every 
one  praised  their  delicate,  sumptuous  beauty. 

But  peepers  as  well  as  listeners  sometimes 
learn  unpleasant  truths  about  themselves. 

"  Are  n't  we  picking  too  many  of  these 
blossoms?"  asked  the  lady  of  the  house. 
"  I  'm  afraid  we  are  wasting  our  almond 
crop." 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  9 

"  Almond  trees  will  never  bear  in  this 
climate/'  said  the  Master  of  the  Garden. 
"  Better  make  the  most  of  the  blossoms  while 
they  last.  The  frost  will  catch  them  in  a 
week  or  two." 

So  the  mother  and  children  gathered  the 
blossoms  recklessly,  —  to  save  them,  they  said. 
Then  a  snow  flaw  came,  and  those  that  had 
been  left  on  the  trees  were  whiter  than  ever 
for  one  day,  and  the  next  day  they  were 
dead.  Each  had  died  with  a  black  spot  at  its 
core,  which  means  the  death  that  has  no  re- 
surrection in  the  fruit  to  come. 

After  the  snow  came  rain  and  frost,  and 
snow  again.  The  white  Sierra  descended  and 
shook  its  storm  cloak  in  the  face  of  laughing 
Spring,  and  she  fled  away  downward  into  the 
warm  valleys.  Alas,  the  flatterer  !  But  the 
Almond  trees  alone  had  trusted  her,  and 
again  their  hope  of  fruit  was  lost. 

"  Did  we  not  say  so  ?  "  muttered  the  Apple 
tree  between  her  chattering  teeth.  She  was 
the  most  crabbed  and  censorious  of  the  sisters, 
and  by  her  talk  of  fruit  one  might  have  sup- 


10  FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND 

posed  her  own  to  be  of  the  finest  quality,- 
but  this  was  not  the  case,  and  the  gardener 
only  that  year  had  been  threatening,  though 
she  did  not  know  it,  to  cut  off  her  top  and 
graft  her  with  a  sweeter  kind. 

The  leaves  of  the  Almond  tree  are  not  beau- 
tiful, neither  is  her  shape  a  thing  to  boast  of. 
When  spring  did  at  last  come  back  to  stay, 
the  Almonds  were  the  plainest  of  all  the 
trees.  Their  blossoms  were  like  bright  can- 
dles burned  to  the  socket,  that  would  light 
no  more ;  their  "  corruptible  crown "  of 
beauty  had  passed  to  other  heads.  No  one 
looked  at  them,  no  one  pitied  them,  except 
the  Fig  trees,  who  wondered  which  had  most 
cause  to  mourn,  —  they,  who  had  never  had  a 
blossom,  or  the  Almond  trees,  who  had  risked 
theirs  and  lost  them  all  before  the  time  of 
blossoms  came. 

The  Fig  trees'  reproach  had  not  been  taken 
away.  While  every  tree  around  them  was 
dressed  in  the  pride  of  the  crop  to  come,  they 
stood  flowerless  and  leafless,  and  burned  with 
shame  through  all  their  barren  shoots. 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  11 

When  the  Master  of  the  Garden  came  with 
his  children  to  look  at  them,  they  hung  their 
heads  and  were  afraid. 

"When  will  they  blossom,  like  the  other 
trees/'  the  children  asked,  "  and  what  sort  of 
flower  will  they  bear  ?  " 

The  Fig  trees  held  their  breath  to  hear  the 
answer. 

"  A  Fig  tree  has  no  flower,  like  the  other 
fruit  trees,"  said  the  Master  of  the  Garden. 
"  Its  blossom  is  contained  in  the  fruit.  You 
cannot  see  it  unless  you  cut  open  the  bud- 
ding figs,  and  then  you  would  not  know  it 
was  a  flower." 

"What  is  the  use  of  having  blossoms,  if 
no  one  ever  sees  them  ?  "  one  of  the  children 
asked. 

"  What  is  the  use  of  doing  good,  unless 
we  tell  everybody  and  brag  about  it  before- 
hand ?  "  the  father  questioned,  smiling. 

"  I  thought  the  best  way  was —  you  know 
—  to  do  it  in  secret,"  said  the  child. 

"  That 's  what  we  are  taught ;  and  some 
persons  do  good  in  that  way,  and  cover  it  up 


.12  FLOWER   OF  THE  ALMOND 

as  if  they  were  ashamed  of  it.  And  so  the 
Fig  tree  does  n't  tell  anybody  when  it  is  going 
to  bear  fruit." 

The  Fig  trees  had  heard  their  doom.  To 
the  words  that  followed  they  had  not  listened ; 
nor  would  they  have  understood  much  more 
of  it  than  the  child  of  its  father's  meaning. 

"What  is  this  he  calls  our  fruit?"  they 
asked  each  other  in  fear  and  loathing.  "  Was 
that  our  fruit,  —  those  green  and  purple  swell- 
ings, that  unspeakable  weight  of  ugliness? 
Will  it  come  year  after  year,  and  shall  we 
never  have  a  flower?  The  burden  without 
the  honor,  without  the  love  and  praise,  that 
beauty  brings.  That  is  the  beginning  and  the 
end  with  us.  Little  sister,  thou  art  happier 
than  we,  for  soon  thy  burden-bearing  will  be 
done.  Uncover  thy  head  and  let  the  sun- 
beams slay  thee,  for  why  should  such  as  we 
encumber  the  ground  !  " 

Trees  that  grow  in  gardens  may  have  long 
memories  and  nature  teaches  them  a  few 
things  by  degrees,  but  they  can  know  little  of 
what  goes  on  in  the  dwellings  or  the  brains 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  13 

of  men,  or  why  one  man  should  plant  and 
call  it  good  and  later  another  come  and  dig 
up  the  first  man's  planting.  But  so  it  hap- 
pened in  this  garden.  "  The  stone  which 
the  builders  rejected,  the  same  was  made  the 
head  of  the  corner." 

"  These  little  Fig  trees  with  their  strange, 
great  leaves,  —  why  were  they  put  off  here  by 
themselves,  I  wonder  ?  "  A  lady  spoke  who 
had  lately  come  to  the  cottage.  She  was  the 
wife  of  the  new  Master  of  the  Garden.  "  I 
wish  we  had  them  where  we  could  see  them 
from  the  house,"  she  said.  "  All  the  other 
trees  are  commonplace  beside  them." 

"  They  are  not  doing  well  here,"  said  her 
husband.  "  This  one,  you  see,  is  nearly  dead. 
They  must  be  transplanted,  or  we  shall  lose 
them  all." 

Then  followed  talk  which  set  the  Fig  trees 
a-tremble  with  doubt  and  amazement  and  joy. 
They  were  to  be  moved  from  that  arid  spot, 
—  where,  they  knew  not,  but  to  some  place 
of  high  distinction  !  They  —  the  little  aliens 
who  had  stood  nearest  the  wall  and  thirsted 


14  FLOWER  OF  THE  ALMOND 

for  a  bare  existence — were  to  be  called  to 
the  front  of  the  garden  and  have  honor  in  the 
presence  of  all !  The  despised  burden  which 
they  had  called  their  deformity  they  heard 
spoken  of  as  the  rarest  fruit  of  the  garden, 
and  themselves  outvalued  beyond  all  the  other 
trees,  for  that,  having  so  little,  they  had  done 
so  much. 

Beauty  too  was  theirs,  it  appeared,  as  well 
as  excellence,  though  they  could  scarcely  be- 
lieve what  their  own  ears  told  them  ;  and  they 
had  a  history  and  a  family  as  old  as  those  of 
the  Almond  tree,  who  can  remember  nothing 
that  did  not  happen  a  thousand  years  ago  and 
so  has  never  learned  anything  in  the  present. 

But  the  Fig  trees  would  have  been  deeply 
troubled  at  their  promotion  could  they  have 
known  what  it  was  to  cost  their  neighbors  the 
Almond  trees. 

"  Two  we  will  keep  for  the  sake  of  their 
flowers,  but  the  others  must  go,  and  give 
room  for  the  Figs."  So  said  the  new  Master, 
and  so  it  was  done.  The  unfruitful  Almond 
trees  were  dug  up  and  thrown  over  the  wall, 


AND  FRUIT  OF  THE  FIG  15 

—  all  but  the  two  whom  their  sisters  had  ran- 
somed with  their  lives ;  for  beauty  has  its 
price  in  this  world  and  there  must  be  some 
one  to  pay  it. 

When  another  spring  came  round,  it  was 
the  little  Fig  tree  that  stood  in  the  bright 
corner  where  the  splendor  of  the  road  lamp 
shone  upon  its  leaves  all  night.  Its  leaves 
were  now  as  broad  as  a  man's  outspread  hand, 
and  its  fruit  was  twice  the  size  it  had  been 
the  season  before. 

Its  sister  trees  stood  round  and  interlaced 
their  boughs  about  it. 

"  Lean  on  us,  little  one,"  they  said,  regard- 
ing it  with  pride. 

"  But  you  have  your  own  load  to  bear." 

"  We  scarcely  feel  it,"  said  the  happy  trees. 

This  was  true ;  for  the  burden  that  had 
seemed  beyond  their  strength,  when  their 
hearts  were  heavy  with  shame  and  despond- 
ency, they  could  bear  up  lightly  now,  since 
they  had  learned  its  meaning  and  its  worth. 

The  new  Master's  children  were  so  full  of 
the  joy  of  spring  in  that  mountain  garden  — 


16  FLOWER   OF  THE  ALMOND 

for  they  too,  like  the  little  Fig  trees,  had 
been  transplanted  from  arid  ground  —  they 
had  no  words  of  their  own  in  which  to  utter 
it.  So  their  mother  taught  them  some  words 
from  a  song  as  old,  almost,  as  the  oldest  gar- 
den that  was  ever  planted :  — 

"  For,  lo,  the  winter  is  past,  the  rain  is  over 
and  gone ;  the  flowers  appear  on  the  earth ; 
the  time  of  the  singing  of  birds  is  come,  and 
the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard  in  our  land ; 
the  fig  tree  putteth  forth  her  green  figs,  and 
the  vines  with  the  tender  grape  give  a  good 
smell." 

"  Awake,  0  north  wind ;  and  come,  thou 
south ;  blow  upon  my  garden,  that  the  spices 
thereof  may  flow  out." 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  "KEEP 
UP" 

UNTIL  Jack  Gilmour  was  seven  years  old 
his  home  had  been  at  his  grandfather's  house 
in  a  country  "  well  wooded  and  watered/'  as 
the  Dutch  captain  who  discovered  it  described 
it  to  his  king. 

There  was  water  in  the  river ;  there  was 
water  in  the  ponds  that  lay  linked  together 
by  falling  streams  among  the  hills  above  the 
mill ;  there  was  water  in  the  spring  lot ;  there 
was  water  in  the  brook  that  ran  through  the 
meadow  across  the  road ;  there  was  water  in 
the  fountain  that  plashed  quietly  all  through 
the  dark,  close  summer  nights,  when  not  a  leaf 
stirred,  even  of  the  weeping  ash,  and  the  chil- 
dren lay  tossing  in  their  beds,  with  only  their 
nightgowns  covering  them.  And  besides  all 
these  living,  flowing  waters,  there  was  water 
in  the  cistern  that  lay  concealed  under  the 


18     THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP 

foundations  of  the  house.  Not  one  of  the 
grandchildren  knew  who  had  dug  it,  or  ce- 
mented it,  or  sealed  it  up,  for  children  and 
children's  children  to  receive  their  first  bath 
from  its  waters.  The  good  grandfather's  care 
had  placed  it  there ;  but  even  that  fact  the 
little  ones  took  for  granted,  as  they  took  the 
grandfather  himself,  —  as  they  took  the  fact 
that  the  ground  was  under  their  feet  when 
they  ran  about  in  the  sunshine. 

In  an  outer  room,  which  had  been  a  kitchen 
once  (before  Jack's  mother  was  born),  there 
was  a  certain  place  in  the  floor  that  gave  out 
a  hollow  sound,  like  that  from  the  planking 
of  a  covered  bridge,  whenever  Jack  stamped 
upon  it.  Somebody  found  him,  one  day,  try- 
ing the  echoes  on  this  queer  spot  in  the  floor, 
and  advised  him  to  keep  off  it.  It  was  the 
trapdoor  which  led  down  into  the  cistern  ; 
and  although  it  was  solidly  made  and  rested 
upon  a  broad  ledge  of  wood  —  well,  it  had 
rested  there  on  that  same  ledge  for  many 
years,  and  it  was  n't  a  pleasant  thought  that 
a  little  boy  in  kilts  should  be  prancing  about 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP  UP    19 

with  only  a  few  ancestral  planks  between  him 
and  a  hidden  pit  of  water. 

Once,  when  the  trapdoor  had  been  raised 
for  the  purpose  of  measuring  the  depth  of 
the  water  in  the  cistern,  Jack  had  looked 
down  and  had  watched  a  single  spot  of  light 
wavering  over  the  face  of  the  dark,  still  pool. 
It  gave  him  a  strange,  uncomfortable  feeling, 
as  if  this  water  were  something  quite  unlike 
the  outdoor  waters,  which  reflected  the  sky 
instead  of  the  under  side  of  a  board  floor. 
This  water  was  imprisoned,  alone  and  silent ; 
and  if  ever  a  sunbeam  reached  it,  it  was  only 
a  stray  gleam  wandering  where  it  could  not 
have  felt  at  home,  and  must  have  been  glad 
to  leap  out  again  when  the  sunbeam  moved 
away  from  the  crack  in  the  floor  that  had  let 
it  in. 

That  same  night  a  thunderstorm  de- 
scended ;  the  chimneys  bellowed,  and  the  rain 
made  a  loud  trampling  upon  the  roof.  Jack 
woke  and  felt  for  his  mother's  hand.  As  he 
lay  still,  listening  to  the  rain  lessening  to 
a  steady,  quiet  drip,  drip,  he  heard  another 


20     THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP  UP 

sound,  very  mysterious  in  the  sleeping  house, 
—  a  sound  as  of  a  small  stream  of  water  fall- 
ing from  a  height  into  an  echoing  vault.  His 
mother  told  him  it  was  the  rain  water  pouring 
from  all  the  roofs  and  gutters  into  the  cistern, 
and  that  the  echoing  sound  was  because  the 
cistern  was  "  low."  Next  morning  the  bath 
water  was  deliciously  fresh  and  sweet ;  and 
Jack  had  no  more  unpleasant  thoughts  about 
the  silent,  sluggish  old  cistern. 

Now,  there  are  parts  of  our  country  where 
the  prayer  "  Give  us  this  day  our  daily  wa- 
ter "  might  be  added  to  the  prayer  "  Give 
us  this  day  our  daily  bread ;  "  unless  we  take 
the  word  "  bread  "  to  mean  all  that  men  and 
women  require  to  preserve  life  to  themselves 
and  their  children.  That  sad  people  of  the 
East  to  whom  this  prayer  was  given  so  long 
ago  could  never  have  forgotten  the  cost  and 
value  of  water. 

If  you  turn  the  pages  of  a  Bible  concord- 
ance to  the  word  "  water,"  you  will  find  it 
repeated  hundreds  of  times,  in  the  language 
of  supplication,  of  longing,  of  prophecy,  of 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP    21 

awful  warning,  of  beautiful  imagery,  of  love 
and  aspiration.  The  history  of  the  Jewish 
people  in  their  wanderings,  their  wars  and 
temptations,  to  their  final  occupation  of  the 
promised  land,  might  be  traced  through  the 
different  meanings  and  applications  of  this  one 
word.  It  was  bargained,  begged,  and  fought 
for,  and  was  apportioned  from  generation  to 
generation.  We  read  among  the  many  stories 
of  those  thirsty  lands  how  Achsah,  daughter 
of  Caleb  the  Kenizzite,  not  content  with  her 
dowry,  asked  of  her  father  yet  another  gift, 
without  which  the  first  were  valueless  :  "  For 
thou  hast  given  me  a  south  land ;  give  me 
also  springs  of  water.  And  Caleb  gave  her 
the  upper  springs  and  the  nether  springs." 

Now,  our  little  boy  Jack  was  seven  years 
old,  and  had  to  be  taken  more  than  halfway 
across  the  continent  before  he  learned  that 
water  is  a  precious  thing.  He  was  taken  to 
an  engineer's  camp  in  a  canon  of  a  little,  wild 
river  that  is  within  the  borders  of  that  region 
of  the  far  West  known  as  the  "  arid  belt." 

Well,  there  was  water  in  this  river;   but 


22     THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP 

after  the  placer-mining  began,  in  the  month 
of  May,  and  Moore's  Creek  brought  down  the 
"  tailings  "  from  the  mines  and  mingled  them 
with  the  current  of  the  river,  its  waters  became 
as  yellow  as  those  of  the  famous  Tiber  as  it 
"  rolls  by  the  towers  of  Rome,"  —  yellow  with 
silt,  which  is  not  injurious ;  but  it  is  not  plea- 
sant to  drink  essence  of  granite  rock,  nor  yet  to 
wash  one's  face  in  it.  They  made  a  filter  and 
filtered  it ;  but  every  pailful  had  to  be  "  packed," 
as  they  say  in  the  West,  by  the  Chinese  cook 
and  the  cook's  assistant.  Economy  in  the  use 
of  water  became  no  more  than  a  matter  of 
common  consideration  for  human  flesh. 

In  addition  to  the  river  there  was  a  stream 
that  came  down  the  gulch  close  beside  the 
camp.  This  little  stream  was  a  spendthrift  in 
the  spring  and  wasted  its  small  patrimony  of 
water ;  by  the  middle  of  summer  it  had  begun 
to  economize,  and  by  September  it  was  a  nig- 
gard,— letting  only  a  small  dribble  come  down 
for  those  at  its  mouth  to  cherish  in  pools  or 
pots  or  pails,  or  in  whatever  it  could  be  gath- 
ered. This  water  of  the  gulch  was  frequently 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP    23 

fouled  by  the  range  cattle  that  came  crowding 
down  to  drink,  mornings  and  evenings.  Dead 
leaves  and  vegetation  lay  soaking  in  it,  as  sum- 
mer waned.  It  was  therefore  condemned  for 
drinking,  but  served  for  bathing  or  for  wash- 
ing the  camp  clothing,  and  was  exceedingly 
precious  by  reason  of  its  small  and  steadily 
decreasing  quantity. 

One  morning,  late  in  July,  Jack  was  fast 
asleep  and  dreaming.  The  sun  was  hot  on  the 
great  hills  toward  the  east,  —  hills  that  had  been 
faintly  green  for  a  few  weeks  in  the  spring, 
but  were  now  given  up  to  the  mingled  colors 
of  the  gray-green  sagebrush  and  the  dun- 
yellow  soil. 

They  would  have  been  hills  of  paradise, 
could  rain  have  fallen  upon  them  as  often  as 
it  falls  upon  the  cedar-crowned  knolls  of  the 
Hudson  ;  for  these  hills  are  noble  in  form  and 
of  great  size,  —  a  family  of  giants  as  they 
march  skyward,  arm  in  arm  and  shoulder  to 
shoulder,  —  and  the  sky  above  them  is  the  sky 
we  call  "  Italian."  The  "  down-canon  wind," 
that  all  night  long  had  swept  the  gulch  from 


24     THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP  UP 

its  source  in  the  hills  to  its  mouth  in  the  river, 
had  fainted  dead  away  in  the  heat  of  the  sun. 
Presently  the  counter  wind  from  the  great 
hot  plains  would  begin  to  blow,  but  this  was 
the  breathless  pause  between. 

The  flies  were  tickling  Jack's  bare  legs  and 
creeping  into  the  neck  of  his  nightgown,  where 
the  button  was  off,  as  usually  it  is  from  a  seven- 
year-old's  nightgown.  He  was  restless,  "  like 
a  dog  that  hunts  in  dreams,"  for  he  was  taking 
the  old  paths  again  that  once  he  had  known 
so  well. 

From  the  eastern  hills  came  the  mingled,  far- 
off  bleating,  the  ululation  of  a  multitude  of 
driven  sheep.  The  sound  had  reached  Jack's 
dreaming  ear.  Suddenly  his  dream  took  shape, 
and  for  an  instant  he  was  a  happy  boy. 

He  was  "at  home"  in  the  East.  It  was 
sheep-washing  time,  the  last  week  in  May ;  the 
apple  orchards  were  a  mass  of  bloom  and  the 
deep,  old,  winding  lanes  were  sweet  with  their 
perfume.  Jack  was  hurrying  up  the  lane  by 
the  Long  Pond  to  the  sheep-washing  place, 
where  the  water  came  down  from  the  pond  in 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP    25 

a  dark,  old,  leaky,  wooden  flume,  and  was  held 
in  a  pool  into  which  the  sheep  were  plunged 
by  twos  and  by  threes,  squeezed  and  tumbled 
about  and  lifted  out  to  stagger  away  under 
the  apple  trees  and  dry  their  heavy  fleeces  in 
the  sun.  Jack  was  kicking  in  his  sleep,  when 
his  name  was  called  by  a  voice  outside  the 
window  and  he  woke.  Nothing  was  left  of 
the  dream,  with  all  its  sweets  of  sight  and 
sound  and  smell,  but  the  noise  of  the  river's 
continuous  wrestle  with  the  rocks  of  the  upper 
bend,  and  that  far-off  multitudinous  clamor 
from  over  the  sun-baked  hills. 

"  Jack,  come  out !  "  said  the  voice  of  Jack's 
big  cousin.  "  They  are  going  to  '  sheep '  us. 
There  's  a  band  of  eight  thousand  coming  !  " 

There  was  a  great  scattering  of  flies  and  of 
bedclothes,  as  Jack  leaped  out.  He  wasted 
no  regrets  upon  the  past,  —  one  isn't  so 
foolish  as  that  at  seven  years  old,  —  but  was 
ready  for  the  joys  of  the  present.  Eight 
thousand  sheep,  or  half  that  number  (allowing 
for  a  big  cousin's  liberal  computation),  were 
a  sight  worth  seeing.  As  to  being  "  sheeped," 


26     THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP  UP 

what  was  there  in  an  engineer's  camp  to 
"  sheep,"  unless  the  eight  thousand  woolly 
range-trotters  should  trot  over  tents  and  house 
roofs  and  stovepipes  and  all,  like  Santa  Claus's 
team  of  reindeer  ! 

Jack  was  out  of  bed  and  into  his  clothes  in 
a  hurry,  and  off  over  the  hill  with  his  cousin, 
buttoning  the  buttons  of  his  "  star "  shirt 
waist  on  the  way. 

The  "  band "  was  pouring  over  the  hill 
slopes  in  all  directions,  making  at  full  speed 
for  the  river.  The  hills  themselves  seemed 
to  be  dizzily  moving.  The  masses  of  distant 
small  gray  objects  swarmed,  they  drifted, 
they  swam,  with  a  curious  motionless  motion. 
They  looked  like  nothing  more  animated  than 
a  crop  of  gray  stones,  nearly  of  a  size,  spread- 
ing broadly  over  the  hills  and  descending 
toward  the  river  with  an  impulse  which 
seemed  scarcely  more  than  the  force  of  gravi- 
tation. 

The  dogs  were  barking,  the  shepherds  were 
racing  and  shouting  to  head  off  the  sheep  and 
check  their  speed,  lest  the  hundreds  behind 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP  UP    27 

should  press  upon  the  hundreds  in  front  and 
force  them  out  into  deep  water.  The  hot  air 
throbbed  with  the  tumult. 

When  the  thirst  of  every  panting  throat 
had  been  slaked  and  the  band  began  to 
scatter  along  the  hill  slopes,  the  boys  went 
forward  to  speak  with  the  sheepmen. 

A  few  moments  afterward  both  lads  were 
returning  to  the  camp  on  a  run,  to  ask  per- 
mission to  accept  from  the  shepherds  the  gift 
of  a  lamb  that  could  n't  "  keep  up  "  with  the 
band.  It  had  run  beside  its  mother  as  far  as 
its  strength  would  carry  it,  and  then  it  had 
fallen  and  been  trampled ;  and  there  it  must  lie 
unless  help  could  revive  it.  A  night  on  the 
hills,  with  the  coyotes  about,  would  finish  it. 

Permission  was  given,  and  breakfast  was  a 
perfunctory  meal  for  the  children  by  reason 
of  the  lamb  lying  on  the  strip  of  shade  out- 
side. After  breakfast  they  sopped  its  mouth 
with  warm  milk,  they  sponged  it  with  cold 
water,  they  tried  to  force  a  spoonful  of  mild 
stimulant  between  its  teeth.  They  hovered 
and  watched  for  signs  of  returning  life.  The 


28     THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP  UP 

lamb  lay  with  its  eyes  closed ;  its  sides,  that 
were  beginning  to  swell,  rose  and  sank  in 
long,  heavy  gasps.  Once  it  moved  an  ear, 
and  the  children  thought  it  must  be  "  coming 
to."  Upon  this  hopeful  sign  they  began  at 
once  to  make  plans  for  the  lamb's  future  life 
and  joys  with  them  in  the  canon. 

It  should  be  led  down  to  the  river,  night 
and  morning,  to  drink ;  it  should  have  bran 
soaked  in  milk ;  it  should  nibble  the  grass  on 
the  green  strip  ;  they  would  build  it  a  house, 
for  fear  the  coyotes  should  come  prowling 
about  at  night ;  it  should  follow  them  up 
the  gulch  and  over  the  hills,  and  race  with 
them  in  the  evenings  on  the  river  beach,  as 
"  Daisy,"  the  pet  fawn,  had  done  —  until 
something  happened  to  her  (the  children 
never  knew  what),  and  the  lovely  creature 
disappeared  from  the  canon  and  out  of  their 
lives  forever. 

When  the  strip  of  morning  shadow  was 
gone,  they  lifted  the  lamb  tenderly  and  carried 
it  to  the  strip  of  afternoon  shadow  on  the 
other  side  of  the  house ;  and  still  it  took  no 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULD  N'T  KEEP  UP 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP    29 

notice  of  the  water  or  the  milk,  or  of  all  the 
children's  care,  nor  seemed  to  hear  that  they 
were  planning  a  happy  life  for  it,  if  only  it 
would  get  well. 

When  twilight  came,  and  still  it  had  not 
moved,  the  children  held  anxious  consultation 
on  the  subject  of  their  neighbors,  the  coyotes ; 
but  their  father  assured  them  there  would 
be  no  danger,  so  near  to  the  house ;  and  it 
seemed  a  pity  to  disturb  the  poor  lamb. 

When  the  cool  night  wind  began  to  blow 
down  the  canon  again,  and  the  children  were 
asleep,  the  lamb  made  its  last  effort.  It  is  the 
instinct  of  all  dumb  creatures  to  keep  upon 
their  feet  as  long  as  they  can  stand ;  for  when 
they  have  fallen  the  herd  has  no  compassion, 
—  or  it  may  be  that  its  comrades  press  around 
the  sufferer  out  of  curiosity  or  mistaken  sym- 
pathy, and  so  trample  it  out  of  existence 
without  meaning  the  least  harm.  The  little 
nursling  of  the  range  obeyed  this  instinct  in 
its  last  moments,  —  struggled  to  its  feet  and 
fell,  a  few  steps  farther  on  ;  and  the  lamb 
that  could  n't  keep  up  was  at  rest. 


30  THE  LAMB  THAT  COULD  N'T  KEEP  UP 

No  more  toiling  over  hills  and  mountains 
and  across  hot  valleys,  packed  in  the  midst 
of  the  band,  breathing  the  dust,  stunned  with 
the  noise,  always  hungry,  almost  always 
athirst,  baked  by  the  sun,  chilled  by  the 
snow,  driven  by  the  wind,  —  drifting  on,  from 
mountain  to  river,  from  river  to  plain. 

This  one,  out  of  eight  thousand,  could  rest 
at  last,  on  cool  grass,  with  the  peace  and  the 
silence  and  the  room  of  a  summer  night 
around  it. 

The  band  slept  upon  the  hills  that  night ; 
the  next  morning  they  crossed  the  gulch 
above  the  camp,  and  drank  up  by  the  way  all 
the  water  of  the  little  stream.  Not  another 
drop  was  seen  for  days.  At  length  it  gathered 
strength  enough  to  trickle  down  again,  but 
it  was  necessary  to  dip  it  up  and  let  it  stand 
in  casks  to  settle  before  it  was  fit  for  use; 
and  meanwhile  the  Chinamen  carriers  did 
double  duty. 

Those  eastern  hills  in  spring  had  been 
covered  with  wild  flowers,  —  the  moss  pink, 
lupines  both  white  and  blue,  wild  phlox,  the 


THE  LAMB  THAT  COULDN'T  KEEP   UP    31 

small  yellow  crocus,  beds  of  tiny  sweet-scented 
wild  pansies,  the  camas  flower,  and  a  tall- 
stemmed,  pale  lilac  lily,  —  the  queen  of  the 
hill  garden.  But  when  spring  came  again, 
the  old  pathways  were  like  an  ash  heap.  The 
beautiful  hill  garden  was  a  desert. 

When  these  great  sheep  bands  pass  over  the 
country,  from  range  to  range,  from  territory 
to  territory,  they  devour  not  only  the  vegeta- 
tipn  of  one  year,  but  the  seeds,  the  roots,  and, 
with  these,  the  promise  of  the  next. 

It  is  the  migration  of  the  Hungry  and  the 
Thirsty  ;  and  a  cry  goes  out  against  them, 
like  the  cry  of  Moab  when  the  children  of 
Israel  camped  within  its  borders  :  — 

"  Surely  this  multitude  will  lick  up  all  that 
is  round  about  us." 


DREAM-HORSES 

THERE  is  a  little  girl  who  hangs  upon  her 
mother's  chair,  getting  her  head  between  her 
mother's  work  and  the  light,  and  begs  for 
pictures. 

She  expects  her  mother  to  make  these  pic- 
tures on  some  bit  of  paper  treasured  for  the 
purpose  which  she  offers,  with  a  book  to  rest 
it  on,  and  a  stubby  pencil  notched  with  small 
toothmarks,  the  record  of  moments  of  per- 
plexity when  Polly  was  making  her  own 
pictures. 

It  is  generally  after  a  bad  failure  of  her 
own  that  she  comes  to  her  mother.  The  pang 
of  disappointment  with  her  own  efforts  is  apt 
to  sharpen  her  temper  a  little;  it  does  not 
make  Polly  more  patient  with  her  mother's 
mistakes  that  she  makes  mistakes  herself. 
But  between  critic  and  artist,  with  such  light 
as  the  dark  lantern  of  a  little  girl's  head  per- 


DREAM-HORSES  33 

mits  to  fall  upon  the  paper,  the  picture  gets 
made  somehow,  and  before  it  is  finished 
Polly's  heart  will  be  so  full  of  sunshine  that 
she  will  insist  upon  comparisons  most  flatter- 
ing to  the  feelings  of  her  artist,  between  their 
different  essays  at  the  same  subject. 

It  is  a  subject  they  are  both  familiar  with  ; 
and  it  is  wonderful,  considering  the  extent  of 
Polly's  patronage,  that  her  artist's  work  does 
not  better  itself. 

It  is  always  a  picture  of  a  young  person  on 
horseback,  —  a  young  person  about  the  age  of 
Polly,  but  much  handsomer  and  more  grown- 
up looking.  And  the  horse  must  be  a  pony 
with  a  flowing  mane  and  tail,  and  his  legs 
must  be  flung  out,  fore  and  aft,  so  that  in 
action  he  resembles  one  of  those  "  crazy-bugs  " 
(so  we  children  used  to  call  them)  that  go 
scuttling  like  mad  things  across  the  still  sur- 
face of  a  pond.  In  other  respects  he  may  be 
as  like  an  ordinary  pony  as  mamma  and  the 
stubby  pencil  can  make  him.  But  the  young 
person  on  the  pony  must  be  drawn  in  profile, 
because  Polly  cannot  make  profiles,  except 


34  DREAM-HORSES 

horses'  profiles ;  her  young  persons  always  look 
straight  out  of  the  picture  as  they  ride  along, 
and  the  effect,  at  full  speed,  on  a  horse  with 
his  legs  widely  extended  from  his  body,  is 
extremely  gay  and  nonchalant. 

With  the  picture  in  her  hand,  the  little 
girl  will  go  away  by  herself  and  proceed  to 
"  dream  and  to  dote." 

She  lives  in  a  horsey  country.  Horses  in 
troops  or  "  bands  "  go  past  by  the  trails,  on 
the  one  side  of  the  river  or  the  other.  Some- 
times they  ford  where  the  water  is  breast-high 
over  the  bar.  It  is  wild  and  delicious  to  hear 
the  mares  whinnying  to  their  foals  in  mid- 
stream, and  the  echo  of  their  voices,  with  the 
rushing  of  the  loud  water  pent  among  the 
hills. 

Often  the  riders  who  are  in  charge  of  the 
band  encamp  for  the  night  on  the  upper  bend 
of  the  river,  and  the  red  spark  of  their  camp- 
fire  glows  brightly  about  the  time  the  little 
girl  must  be  going  to  bed ;  for  it  is  in  spring 
or  fall  the  bands  of  horses  go  up  into  the  hiUs 
or  .down  into  the  valleys,  or  off,  one  does  not 


DREAM-HORSES  35 

know  where,  —  to  a  "  round  up,"  perhaps, 
where  each  stockman  counts  his  own,  and  puts 
his  brand  on  the  young  colts.  Over  the  hills, 
where  Polly  and  her  big  brother  go  wild- 
flower  hunting,  horses  wander  loose  and  look 
down  from  the  summits,  mere  specks,  like 
black  mice,  against  the  sky  ;  they  are  plainly 
to  be  seen  from  miles  away,  for  there  is  not  a 
tree  anywhere  upon  these  hills.  Sometimes 
a  single  horse,  the  chieftain  of  a  troop,  will 
stand  alone  on  a  hilltop  and  take  a  look  all 
the  wide  country  round,  and  call,  in  his  splen- 
did voice  like  "  sounding  brass,"  to  the  mares 
and  colts  that  have  scattered  in  search  of  al- 
kali mud  to  lick,  or  just  to  show,  perhaps,  that 
they  are  able  to  get  on  without  his  lordship. 
He  will  call,  and  if  his  troop  do  not  answer, 
he  will  condescend  to  go  a  little  way  to  meet 
them,  halting  and  inquiring  with  short  whin- 
nies what  they  are  about.  Sometimes,  in  spite 
of  discipline,  they  will  compel  him  to  go  all 
the  way  to  meet  them ;  for  even  a  horse  soon 
tires  of  dignity  on  a  hilltop  all  alone,  with 
no  one  to  see  how  it  becomes  him. 


36  DREAM-HORSES 

Polly  likes  to  meet  stray  horses  on  her 
walks,  close  enough  to  see  their  colors  and  tell 
which  are  the  pretty  ones,  the  ones  she  calls 
hers.  They  stare  at  her  from  under  breezy 
forelocks,  and  no  doubt  think  themselves  much 
finer  creatures  than  little  girls  who  have  only 
two  feet  to  go  upon.  And  the  little  girl  thinks 
so,  too,  —  or  so  it  would  seem  ;  for  every  even- 
ing after  sunset  when  she  runs  about  the 
house  bareheaded  she  plays  she  is  a  horse  her- 
self. And  not  satisfied  with  being  a  horse, 
she  plays  she  is  a  rider,  too.  Such  a  complex 
ideal  as  that  surely  never  came  into  the  brain 
of  a  "  cay  use,"  for  all  his  big  eyes  and  his 
tangle  of  hair  which  Polly  thinks  so  magnifi- 
cent. 

The  head  and  the  feet  of  Polly  and  her 
tossing  locks  are  pure  horse  ;  that  is  evident 
at  a  glance  as  she  prances  past  the  window. 
But  the  clinched,  controlling  hands  are  the 
hands  of  the  rider,  —  a  thrilling  combination 
on  a  western  summer  evening,  when  the 
brassy  sunset  in  the  gate  of  the  canon  is  like 
a  trumpet-note,  and  the  cold,  pink  light  on 


DREAM-HORSES  37 

the  hills  is  as  keen  as  a  bugle-call,  and  the  very 
spirit  of  "  boots  and  saddles  "  is  in  the  wind 
that  gustily  blows  up  from  the  plains,  turning 
all  the  poplars  white,  and  searching  the  quiet 
house  from  room  to  room  for  any  laggard 
stay-indoors. 

Within  a  mile  of  the  house,  in  the  canon 
which  Polly  calls  home,  there  is  a  horse  ranch 
in  a  lovely  valley  opening  toward  the  river. 
All  around  it  are  these  treeless  hills  that  look 
so  barren  and  feed  so  many  wild  lives.  The 
horses  have  a  beautiful  range,  from  the  shel- 
tered valley  up  the  gulches  to  the  summits 
of  the  hills  and  down  again  to  the  river  to 
drink.  The  men  live  in  a  long,  low  cabin, 
attached  to  a  corral  much  bigger  than  the 
cabin,  and  have  an  extremely  horsey  time 
of  it. 

I  should  n't  be  surprised  if  it  were  among 
Polly's  dreams  to  be  one  of  a  picked  com- 
pany of  little-girl  riders,  in  charge  of  a  band 
of  long-tailed  ponies,  just  the  right  size  for 
little  girls  to  manage ;  to  follow  the  ponies 
over  the  hills  all  day,  and  at  evening  to  fetch 


38  DREAM-HORSES 

water  from  the  river  and  cook  their  own 
little-girl  suppers  in  the  dingy  cabin  by  the 
corral ;  to  have  envious  visits  from  other 
little  girls,  and  occasionally  to  go  home  and 
tell  mother  all  about  it. 

Now,  in  this  country  of  real  horses  there 
were  not  many  play-horses,  and  these  few  not 
of  the  first  quality.  Hobby-horses  in  the 
shops  of  the  town  were  most  trivial  in  size, 
meant  only  for  riders  of  a  very  tender  age. 
Some  of  them  were  merely  heads  of  horses, 
fastened  to  a  seat  upon  rockers,  with  a  shelf 
in  front  to  keep  the  inexperienced  rider  in  his 
place. 

There  were  people  in  the  town,  no  doubt, 
who  had  noble  rocking-horses  for  their  little 
six-year-olds,  but  they  must  have  sent  for 
them  on  purpose ;  the  storekeepers  did  not 
"  handle  "  this  variety. 

So  Polly's  papa,  assisted  by  John  Brown, 
the  children's  most  delightful  companion  and 
slave  and  story-teller,  concluded  to  build  a 
hobby-horse  that  would  outdo  the  hobby- 
horse of  commerce.  (Brown  was  a  modest, 


DREAM-HORSES  39 

tender-hearted  man,  who  had  been  a  sailor  off 
the  coast  of  Norway,  among  the  islands  and 
fiords,  a  miner  where  the  Indians  were 
"  bad,"  a  cowboy,  a  ranchman ;  and  he  was 
now  irrigating  the  garden  and  driving  the 
team  in  the  canon.) 

Children  like  best  the  things  they  invent 
and  make  themselves,  and  plenty  of  grown 
people  are  children  in  this  respect ;  they  like 
their  own  vain  imaginings  better  than  some 
of  the  world's  realities. 

But  Polly's  rocking-horse  was  no  "  vain 
thing,"  although  her  father  and  John  did 
have  their  own  fun  out  of  it  before  she  had 
even  heard  of  it. 

His  head  was  n't  "  made  of  pease-straw," 
nor  his  tail  "  of  hay,"  but  in  his  own  way  he 
was  quite  as  successful  a  combination. 

His  eyes  were  two  of  Brother's  marbles. 
They  were  not  mates,  which  was  a  pity,  as 
they  were  set  somewhat  closely  together  so 
you  could  n't  help  seeing  them  both  at  once  ; 
but  as  one  of  them  soon  dropped  out  it  did  n't 
so  much  matter.  His  mane  was  a  strip  of 


40  DREAM-HORSES 

long  leather  fringe.  His  tail  was  made  up  of 
precious  contributions  extorted  from  the  real 
tails  of  Billy  and  Blue  Pete  and  the  team- 
horses,  and  twined  most  lovingly  together 
by  John,  the  friend  of  all  the  parties  to  the 
transfer. 

The  saddle  was  a  McClellan  tree,  which  is 
the  framework  of  a  kind  of  man's  saddle ;  a 
wooden  spike,  fixed  to  the  left  side  of  it  and 
covered  with  leather,  made  a  horn,  and  the 
saddle-blanket  was  a  Turkish  towel. 

It  was  rainy  weather,  and  the  canon  days 
were  short,  when  this  unique  creation  of  love 
and  friendship  —  which  are  things  more 
precious,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  even  than  horse- 
flesh—  took  its  place  among  Polly's  idols, 
and  was  at  once  clothed  on  with  all  her  dreams 
of  life  in  action. 

When  she  mounted  the  hobby-horse  she 
mounted  her  dream-horse  as  well ;  they  were 
as  like  as  Don  Quixote's  helmet  and  the 
barber's  basin. 

She  rode  him  by  firelight  in  the  last  half- 
hour  before  bedtime.  She  rode  him  just  after 


DREAM-HORSES  41 

breakfast  in  the  morning.  She  "  took  "  to 
him  when  she  was  in  trouble,  as  older  dream- 
riders  take  to  their  favorite  "  hobbies."  She 
rocked  and  she  rode,  from  restlessness  and 
wretchedness  into  peace,  from  unsatisfied 
longings  into  temporary  content,  from  bad 
tempers  into  smiles  and  sunshine. 

She  rode  out  the  winter,  and  she  rode  in 
the  wild  and  windy  spring.  She  got  well  of 
the  measles  pounding  back  and  forth  on  that 
well-worn  seat.  She  took  cold  afterward, 
before  the  winds  grew  soft,  experimenting 
with  draughts  in  a  corner  of  the  piazza. 

Now  that  summer  gives  to  her  fancies  and 
her  footsteps  a  wider  range,  the  hard-worked 
hobby  gets  an  occasional  rest.  (Often  he  is 
to  be  seen  with  his  wooden  nose  resting  on  the 
seat  of  a  chair  which  is  bestrewed  with  clover 
blossoms,  withered  wild-roses,  and  bits  of 
grass;  for  Polly,  like  other  worshipers  of 
graven  images,  believes  that  her  idol  can  eat 
and  drink  and  appreciate  substantial  offer- 
ings.) But  when  the  dream  grows  too  strong, 
the  picture  too  vivid,  —  not  mamma's  picture, 


42  DREAM-HORSES 

but  the  one  in  the  child's  heart,  —  she  takes 
to  the  saddle  again,  and  the  horsehair  switch 
and  the  leather  fringes  float  upon  the  wind, 
and  her  fancies  mount,  far  above  the  lava 
bluffs  that  confine  her  vision. 

Will  our  little  girl-riders  be  as  happy  on 
their  real  horses,  when  they  get  them,  as  they 
are  upon  their  dream-horses  ?  Is  the  actual 
possession  of  "  back  hair  "  and  the  wearing  of 
long  petticoats  more  blissful  than  the  knot, 
hard-twisted,  of  the  ends  of  a  silk  handker- 
chief, which  the  child-woman  binds  about  her 
brows  when  she  walks  —  like  Troy's  proud 
dames  whose  garments  sweep  the  ground  —  in 
the  skirt  of  her  mother's  "  cast-off  gown  "  ? 

It  depends  upon  the  direction  these  im- 
perious dream-horses  will  take  with  our  small 
women.  Will  the  rider  be  in  bondage  to  the 
steed  ?  Heaven  forbid !  for  dream-horses 
make  good  servants  but  very  bad  masters. 
Will  they  bear  her  fast  and  far,  and  will  she 
keep  a  quiet  eye  ahead  and  a  constant  hand 
upon  the  rein  ?  Will  they  flag  and  flounder 
down  in  the  middle-ways,  where  so  many  of 


DREAM-HORSES  43 

us  have  parted  with  our  dream-steeds  and 
taken  the  footpath,  consoled  to  find  that  we 
have  plenty  of  company  and  are  not  alto- 
gether dismayed  ?  The  dream-horses  carry 
their  child-riders  beyond  the  mother's  follow- 
ing, so  that  the  eyes  and  the  heart  ache  with 
straining  after  the  fleeting  vision. 

It  is  better  she  should  not  see  too  much 
nor  too  far  along  the  way  they  go,  since  "  to 
travel  joyfully  is  better  than  to  arrive." 

If  only  they  could  know  their  own  "  blessed- 
ness "  while  the  way  is  long  before  them  ! 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

AT  the  camp  in  the  canon  they  had  a  cow. 
It  is  true  she  sometimes  broke  away  and  went 
off  with  the  herds  on  the  range  and  had  to  be 
chased  on  horseback  and  caught  with  a  lasso. 
They  had  chickens,  —  all  that  were  left  them 
from  night  raids  by  the  coyotes;1  and  a 
garden,  the  products  of  which  they  shared 
with  the  jack-rabbits  and  the  gophers.  But 
the  supply  wagon  brought  fresh  fruit  from  the 
town,  ten  miles  away,  and  new  butter  from  the 

1  Poisoned  meat  was  laid  near  the  chicken-house  one  night 
after  the  coyotes  had  carried  off  some  fine  young  Plymouth 
Rocks  (with  a  baleful  instinct  they  always  picked  out  the 
best  of  the  fowls),  and  was  eaten  by  them.  Two  of  the  rob- 
bers were  found  next  day,  dead,  by  the  irrigation  ditch,  where 
they  had  crept  to  quench  their  thirst,  and  one  was  afterward 
seen,  from  time  to  time,  in  the  sage-brush,  a  hairless  spectre. 
The  coyote  mothers  no  doubt  told  their  babies  of  this  grue- 
some outcast  as  a  warning,  not  against  chicken-stealing, 
which  must  be  one  of  the  coyote  virtues,  but  against  poison 
and  other  desperate  arts  of  man. 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  45 

valley  ranches.  There  were  no  mosquitoes,  no 
peddlers,  no  tramps,  no  book  agents,  no  unde- 
sirable neighbor's  children,  whom  one  cannot 
scare  away  as  one  may  the  neighbor's  dogs  and 
chickens  when  they  creep  through  the  fence, 
but  must  be  civil  to  for  the  sake  of  peace  and 
good- will,  —  which  are  good  things  in  a  neigh- 
borhood. 

Jack  Gilmour  worked  at  his  crude  inventions 
in  the  shop,  and  was  allowed  to  use  grown-up 
tools  under  certain  not  too  hard  conditions; 
and  Polly  rode  up  and  down  the  steep  path  to 
the  river  beach  on  the  shoulders  of  the  young 
assistant  engineers —  and  assistant  everything- 
elses.  The  mother  was  waited  on  and  spoiled, 
as  women  are  in  camp ;  she  was  even  invited 
to  go  fishing  with  her  husband  and  Mr.  Dane, 
one  of  the  young  assistant s-in-general.  It  was 
a  dull  time  for  work  in  the  camp,  and  there 
were  good  care-takers  with  whom  Mrs.  Gilmour 
could  trust  the  children.  The  boy  was  the 
elder.  He  was  learning  those  two  most  im- 
portant elements  of  a  boy's  education,  up  to 
nine  years,  according  to  Sir  Walter  Scott,  — 


46  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

to  ride  and  to  speak  the  truth.  But  he  was 
only  eight,  and  perhaps  was  not  quite  perfect 
in  either. 

He  watched  the  three  happy  ones  ride  away, 
and  as  they  turned  on  the  hilltop  and  waved 
good-by  to  the  little  figure  on  the  trail  below, 
he  was  longing,  with  all  the  strength  of  desire 
an  eight-year-old  heart  can  know,  for  the  time 
to  come  when  he  too  should  climb  the  hills 
and  wave  his  hand  against  the  sky  before 
turning  the  crest,  where  he  had  so  often  stood 
and  felt  so  small,  gazing  up  into  those  higher 
hills  that  locked  the  last  bright  bend  of  the 
river  from  sight. 

They  were  to  go  up  Charcoal  Creek ;  they 
were  to  cross  the  "  Divide ; "  they  were  to  go 
down  Grouse  Creek  on  the  other  side  and 
camp  on  some  unknown  bit  of  the  river's  shore. 

The  boy  went  stumbling  back  down  the 
dusty  path  to  his  unfinished  work  in  the  shop, 
—  the  engine  for  a  toy  elevated  road  he 
was  making.  But  the  painfully  fashioned 
fragments  of  his  plan  had  no  meaning  for 
eyes  that  still  saw  only  the  hills  against  the 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  47 

morning  sky,  and  the  three  happy  ones  riding 
away. 

This  first  trip  led  to  a  second  and  longer 
one,  to  the  fishing-grounds  up  the  river,  by 
the  trail  on  the  opposite  shore.  Jack  heard 
his  father  and  Mr.  Dane  talking  one  morning 
at  the  breakfast-table  about  riding  down  to 
Turner's  and  getting  a  pack-animal  and  some 
more  riding  animals,  —  and  mamma  was  going 
again  !  What  good  times  the  grown-ups  did 
have !  And  John  Brown,  Jack's  particular 
crony  from  the  men's  camp,  was  going,  to  cook 
and  take  care  of  the  animals.  This  word 
"  animal "  is  used  in  the  West  to  describe 
anything  that  is  ridden  or  "packed,"  —  horse, 
mule,  Indian  pony,  or  "  burro."  It  is  never 
applied  to  cattle  or  unbroken  horses  on  the 
range ;  these  are  "  stock." 

The  party  were  to  take  a  tent  and  stay  per- 
haps a  week,  if  no  word  came  from  the  home 
camp  to  call  them  back. 

Jack  slipped  away  from  the  table  and  went 
out  and  hung  upon  the  railing  of  a  footbridge 
that  crossed  the  brook.  Beside  learning  how 


48  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

to  ride  and  to  speak  the  truth,  Jack  was  learn- 
ing to  whistle.  He  was  practicing  this  last 
more  persistently,  perhaps,  than  either  of  the 
more  important  branches  of  knowledge,  —  let 
us  hope  because  there  was  more  need  of  prac- 
tice ;  for  he  was  as  yet  very  far  from  being  a 
perfect  whistler.  It  was  but  a  melancholy, 
tuneless  little  note  in  which  he  gave  vent  to 
his  feelings,  as  he  watched  the  trickling  water. 

"  I  'd  like  to  take  the  boy,"  his  father  was 
that  moment  saying  at  the  breakfast-table  in 
the  cook-tent,  "  i£  we  had  anything  he  could 
ride."  And  then  he  added,  smiling,  "  There 's 
Mrs.  O'Dowd."  The  smile  went  around  the 
table. 

Mrs.  O'Dowd,  or  "  Peggy,"  as  she  was  vari- 
ously called,  was  a  gray  donkey  of  uncertain 
age  and  mild  but  inflexible  disposition  who 
sometimes  consented  to  carry  the  children  over 
the  hills  at  a  moderate  pace,  her  usual  equip- 
ment being  a  side-saddle,  which  did  not  fit  her 
oval  figure  (the  curves  of  which  turned  the 
wrong  way  for  beauty) ;  so  the  side-saddle  was 
always  slipping  off,  obliging  the  children  to 
slide  down  and  "  cinch  up." 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  49 

The  engineer's  house  was  built  against  a 
hill ;  from  the  end  of  the  upper  piazza  a  short 
bridge,  or  gang-plank,  joined  the  hill  and  met 
a  steep  trail  which  led  upward  to  the  tents, 
the  garden,  the  road  to  the  lower  camp,  the 
road  up  the  bluffs,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  chil- 
dren's world  beyond  the  gulch.  One  of  their 
favorite  exercises  with  Mrs.  O'Dowd  was  to 
ride  her  down  the  trail,  and  try  to  force  her 
over  this  gang-plank.  She  would  put  her 
small  feet  cautiously  one  before  the  other, 
hanging  her  great  white  head  and  sniffing  her 
way.  The  instant  her  toes  touched  the  reso- 
nant boards  of  the  bridge,  she  stopped,  and 
then  the  exercises  began.  Mrs.  O'Dowd's 
gravity  and  resignation,  in  the  midst  of  the 
children's  laughing  and  shouting  and  pulling 
and  whacking,  was  most  edifying  to  see ;  but 
she  never  budged.  She  saw  the  darlings  of 
the  household  dance  back  and  forth  before  her 
in  safety;  the  engineers  in  their  big  boots 
would  push  past  her  and  tramp  over  the  bridge. 
Mrs.  O'Dowd  was  a  creature  of  fixed  habits. 
Useless,  flighty  children,  and  people  with 


50  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

unaccountable  ways  of  their  own  might  do 
as  they  liked ;  it  had  never  been  her  habit  to 
trust  Mrs.  O'D.  on  such  a  place  as  that,  and 
she  never  did. 

"Yes,  the  boy  might  ride  Peggy,"  said 
Jack's  father.  "  He  could  keep  her  up  with 
John  and  the  pack-mule,  if  not  with  us." 

"  Oh,  I  should  not  want  him  behind  with 
the  men,"  said  Jack's  mother,  —  "  and  those 
high  trails  !  If  he 's  to  go  over  such  places, 
he  must  ride  where  you  can  look  after  his 
saddle-girths."  She  could  hear  Jack's  dis- 
consolate whistle  as  she  spoke.  "  I  hope  he 
does  not  hear  us,"  she  said.  "  It  would  break 
his  heart  to  think  he  is  going,  and  be  left 
behind  after  all." 

"If  the  boy's  heart  is  going  to  break  as 
easily  as  that,  it  is  time  it  was  toughened," 
said  his  father,  but  not  ungently.  "  I  should 
tell  him  there  is  a  chance  of  his  going ;  but 
if  it  can't  be  managed,  he  must  not  whine 
about  it." 

Jack  went  to  bed  by  himself,  except  on 
Sunday  nights;  then  his  mother  went  with 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  51 

him,  and  saw  that  he  laid  his  clothes  in  a  neat 
pile  on  the  trunk  by  his  bed,  —  for  in  a  camp 
bedroom  trunks  sometimes  take  the  place  of 
chairs,  —  and  heard  him  say  his  prayers,  and 
sometimes  they  talked  together  a  little  while 
before  she  kissed  him  good-night.  That  night 
was  Sunday  night,  and  Jack's  mother  asked 
him,  while  she  watched  his  undressing,  if  it 
ever  made  him  dizzy  to  stand  on  high  places 
and  look  down.  Jack  did  not  seem  to  know 
what  that  feeling  was  like;  and  then  she 
asked  him  how  far  he  had  ever  ridden  on  Mrs. 
O'Dowd  at  one  time.  Jack  thought  he  had 
never  ridden  farther  than  Mr.  Hensley's 
ranch  —  that  was  three  miles  away,  six  miles 
in  all,  going  and  coming  ;  but  he  had  rested 
at  the  ranch,  and  had  walked  for  a  part  of 
the  journey  when  his  sister  Polly  had  resolved 
to  ride  by  herself,  instead  of  behind  him, 
holding  on  to  his  jacket. 

It  made  his  mother  very  happy  to  tell  the 
boy  that  the  next  day,  if  nothing  happened  to 
prevent,  he  was  to  set  out  with  the  fishing 
party  for  a  week's  camping  up  the  river.  She 


52  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

knew  how,  in  his  reticent  child's  heart,  he  had 
envied  them.  He  was  seated  on  the  side  of 
his  bed,  emptying  the  beach  sand  out  of  his 
stockings,  when  she  told  him.  He  said  no- 
thing at  first,  and  one  who  did  not  know  his 
plain  little  face  as  his  mother  knew  it  might 
have  thought  he  was  indifferent.  She  took  a 
last  look  at  him,  before  leaving  the  room.  It 
seemed  but  a  very  little  while  ago  that  the 
close-cropped  whity-brown  head  on  the  pillow 
had  been  covered  with  locks  like  thistle-down, 
which  had  never  been  touched  with  the  scis- 
sors ;  that  the  dark  little  work-hardened  hands 
(for  Jack's  play  was  always  work)  lying  out- 
side the  sheet  had  been  kissed  a  dozen  times 
a  day  for  joy  of  their  rosy  palms  and  dimples. 
And  to-morrow  the  boy  would  put  on  spurs, 

—  no,  not  spurs,  but  a  spur,  left  over  from 
the  men's  accoutrements,  —  and  he  would  ride 

—  to  be  sure  it  was  only  Mrs.  O'Dowd,  but 
no  less  would  the  journey  be  one  of  the  land- 
marks in  his  life.     And  many  older  adven- 
turers than   Jack  have   set  out  in  this  way 
on  their  first  emprise,  —  not  very  heroically 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  53 

equipped,  except  for  brave  and  joyous  dreams 
and  good  faith  in  their  ability  to  keep  the 
pace  set  by  better-mounted  comrades. 

Jack  woke  next  morning  with  a  delightful 
feeling  that  this  day  was  not  going  to  be  like 
any  other  day  he  had  known.  Preparations 
for  the  journey  had  already  begun.  In  the 
cook-tent  two  boxes  were  being  filled  with 
things  to  eat  and  things  to  cook  them  with. 
These  were  to  be  covered  with  canvas,  roped, 
and  fastened,  one  on  each  side  of  the  pack- 
mule's  pack-saddle.  On  the  piazza,  saddle-bags 
were  being  packed ;  guns,  ammunition,  fishing- 
rods,  rubber  coats,  and  cushions  were  being 
collected  in  a  heap  for  John  to  carry  down  to 
the  beach  to  be  ferried  across  the  river,  where 
the  man  from  Turner's  horse-ranch  was  already 
waiting  with  the  animals.  The  saddle-horses 
and  Mrs.  O'l)owd  were  to  cross  by  the  ford 
above  the  rapids.  The  boat  went  back  and 
forth  two  or  three  times,  and  in  the  last  load 
went  Jack  and  his  mother  and  Polly  in  the 
care  of  one  of  the  young  engineers.  The  stir 
of  departure  had  fired  Polly's  imagination.  It 


54  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

was  not  mamma  saying  good-by  to  Polly,  — 
it  was  Polly  saying  good-by  to  mamma,  be- 
fore riding  off  with  "  bubba  "  on  an  expedition 
of  their  own.  She  was  telling  about  it,  in 
a  soft,  joyous  recitative,  to  any  one  who  had 
time  to  listen.  The  man  from  Turner's  had 
brought,  for  Mrs.  Gilmour  to  ride,  a  mule  he 
called  a  lady's  animal,  but  remarked  that  for 
his  own  use  he  preferred  one  that  would  go. 
Mrs.  Gilmour  thought  that  she  did,  too;  so 
the  side-saddle  was  changed  from  the  "  lady's 
animal "  to  the  mule  that  "  would  go." 

The  pack-mule  was  "packed,"  the  men's 
horses  were  across  the  ford,  mamma  had 
kissed  Polly,  two  pairs  and  a  half  of  spurs 
were  jingling  impatiently  on  the  rocks, — 
but  where  was  Mrs.  O'Dowd  ? 

She  was  dallying  at  the  ford,  —  she  was 
coy  about  taking  to  the  water.  Sticks  and 
straps  and  emphatic  words  of  encouragement 
had  no  effect  upon  her.  She  had  unfortu- 
nately had  time  to  make  up  her  mind,  and 
she  had  made  it  up  not  to  cross  the  river. 
She  was  persuaded  finally,  by  means  of  a 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  55 

"lass'  rope"  around  her  neck.  Everybody 
was  laughing  at  her  subdued  way  of  making 
herself  conspicuous,  delaying  the  whole  party 
and  meekly  implying  that  it  was  everybody's 
fault  but  her  own. 

The  camp  of  the  engineers  was  on  a  little 
river  of  Idaho  that  rises  in  .the  Bitter-root 
range  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  flows  into 
the  swift,  silent  current  of  the  great  Snake 
River,  which  flows  into  the  Columbia,  which 
flows  into  the  Pacific ;  so  that  the  waters  of 
this  little  inland  river  see  a  great  deal  of 
grand  and  peculiar  scenery  on  their  way  to 
the  ocean.  But  the  river  as  it  flows  past  the 
camp  is  still  very  young  and  inexperienced. 
Its  waters  have  carried  no  craft  larger  than 
a  lumberman's  pirogue,  or  the  coffin-shaped 
box  the  Chinese  wood-drivers  use  for  a  boat. 
Its  canons  have  never  echoed  to  a  locomo- 
tive's scream  ;  it  knows  not  towns  nor  villages ; 
not  even  a  telegraph  pole  has  ever  been  reared 
on  its  banks.  It  is  just  out  of  the  moun- 
tains, hurrying  down  through  the  gate  of  its 
last  canon  to  the  desert  plains.  But  young 


56  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

and  provincial  as  it  is,  it  has  an  ancestral  his- 
tory very  ancient  and  respectable,  if  mystery 
and  tragedy  and  years  of  reticence  can  give 
dignity  to  a  family  history.  The  river's  story 
has  been  patiently  recorded  on  the  tablets  of 
the  black  basalt  bluffs  that  face  each  other 
across  its  channel.  Their  language  it  is  not 
given  to  everybody  to  read.  The  geologists 
tell  a  wonderful  tale  which  they  learned  from 
those  inscriptions  on  the  rocks.  They  do  not 
say  how  many  years  ago,  but  long  enough 
to  have  given  a  very  ancient  name  to  our 
river,  —  had  there  been  any  one  living  at  that 
time  to  call  it  by  a  name,  —  it  met  with  a 
fearful  obstruction,  a  very  dragon  in  its  path, 
which  threatened  to  devour  it  altogether,  or 
to  scatter  it  in  little  streams  over  the  face 
of  the  earth.  A  flood  of  melted,  boiling-hot 
lava  burst  up  suddenly  in  the  river's  bed, 
making  it  to  boil  like  a  pot,  and  crowded 
into  the  granite  gorges  through  which  the 
river  had  found  its  way,  half  filling  them. 
It  was  a  battle  between  the  heavens  and  the 
earth,  —  the  stream  of  molten  rock,  blinding 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  57 

hot  from  the  caverns  beneath  the  earth's 
crust,  meeting  the  sweet  cool  waters  from  the 
clouds  that  troop  about  the  mountains  or 
hide  their  tops  in  mist  and  snow.  The  life- 
giving  flood  prevailed  over  that  which  brought 
only  defacement  and  death.  The  sullen  lava 
flux  settled,  shrank,  and  hardened  at  last, 
fitting  into  the  granite  gorges  as  melted  lead 
fits  the  mould  into  which  it  is  poured.  The 
waters  kept  flowing  down,  never  resting  till 
they  had  worn  a  new  channel  in  the  path  of 
the  old  one,  only  narrower  and  deeper,  down 
through  the  intruding  lava.  When  the  river 
was  first  known  to  men,  wherever  its  course 
lay  through  a  granite  gorge  the  granite  was 
seen  to  be  lined  in  places,  often  continuously 
for  miles,  with  black  lava  rock,  or  basalt, 
standing  in  lofty  palisades  with  deeply  scarred 
and  graven  fronts  and  with  long  slides  of 
crumbled  rock  at  their  feet,  descending  to 
the  level  of  the  river. 

Another  part  of  the  river's  story  has  been 
toilsomely  written  in  the  trails  that  wind 
along  its  shores,  worn  by  the  feet  of  men  and 


58  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

animals.  Whose  feet  were  the  first  to  tread 
them,  and  on  what  errands?  This  is  the 
part  of  the  river's  story  some  of  us  would 
like  best  to  know.  But  this  the  geologist 
cannot  tell  us. 

It  was  one  of  these  hunters',  miners',  cow- 
boys', packers',  ranchmen's  trails  the  fishing- 
party  followed  on  its  way  up  the  river. 
Through  the  canon  they  wound  along  the 
base  of  the  lava  bluffs;  then  entered  a 
crooked  fold  of  the  hills  called  Sheep  Gulch, 
passing  through  willow  thickets,  rattling  over 
the  pebbles  of  a  summer-dried  stream,  losing 
the  breeze  and  getting  more  than  they  wanted 
of  the  sun.  Sheep  Gulch  is  one  of  the  haunts 
of  grouse,  wood-doves,  and  "  cotton-tails " 
(as  the  little  gray  rabbits  are  called  to  dis- 
tinguish them  from  the  tall  leaping  "  jack- 
rabbits  "  of  the  sage-brush  plains,  which  are 
like  the  English  hare). 

Above  Turner's  horse-ranch,  Sheep  Gulch 
divides  into  two  branches ;  up  one  of  these 
goes  the  old  Idaho  City  road.  Where  the 
gulch  divides  there  is  a  disused  cabin,  (which 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  59 

Jack  remembered  afterward  because  there  they 
saw  some  grouse  which  they  did  n't  get,)  and 
there  they  left  the  trail  for  the  old  stage-road. 
As  they  climbed  the  little  divide  which  sepa- 
rates the  waters  (when  there  are  any)  of 
Sheep  Gulch  from  those  of  Moore's  Creek, 
they  were  met  by  a  fresh  breeze  which  cooled 
their  hot  faces  and  seemed  to  welcome  them 
to  the  hills.  The  hills  were  all  around 
them  now,  —  the  beautiful  mountain  pastures, 
golden  with  their  wind-sown  harvest  of  wild, 
strong-stemmed  grasses.  As  the  grass  be- 
comes scarce  on  the  lower  ranges  the  herds 
of  cattle  climb  to  the  higher,  along  the 
spiral  trails  they  make  in  grazing,  taking  al- 
ways, like  good  surveyors,  the  easiest  upward 
grade. 

In  the  fall  the  cattle-men  send  out  their 
cowboys,  or  "riders,"  to  drive  the  herds 
down  from  these  highest  ranges,  where 
snow  falls  early,  and  to  collect  them  in  some 
valley  chosen  for  the  autumn  "round-up." 

At  Giles's  ranch,  on  the  divide,  the  party 
halted  to  cinch  up  and  to  ask  a  drink  all 


60  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

around  from  the  spring  which  every  traveler 
who  has  tasted  it  remembers. 

The  women  of  the  household  —  a  slender, 
dark-haired  daughter  and  a  stout,  fair, 
flushed  mother  with  a  year-old  baby  —  were 
busy,  baby  and  all,  in  an  outdoor  kitchen,  a 
delightful-looking  place,  part  light  and  part 
shadow,  and  full  of  all  manner  of  tools  and 
rude  conveniences  that  told  of  cheerful,  busy 
living  and  making  the  best  of  things.  They 
were  preparing  for  the  coming,  next  week, 
of  the  threshers,  —  a  yearly  event  of  conse- 
quence at  a  ranch,  —  fifteen  men  with 
horses  for  their  machines  and  saddle-horses 
besides,  all  to  be  fed  and  lodged  at  the  ranch.  • 
In  the  corral  behind  the  big  new  barn,  there 
were  stacks  of  yellow  and  stacks  of  green, 
and  between  them  a  haypress,  painted  pink, 
which  one  could  see  as  far  as  one  could  see 
Giles's.  Altogether  it  was  lovely  at  Giles's  ; 
but  they  were  building  a  new  house,  —  which, 
of  course,  they  had  a  perfect  right  to  do.  But 
whoever  stops  there  next  year  will  find  them 
all  snugly  roofed  and  gabled  and  painted 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  61 

white;  and  it  is  to  be  feared  the  outdoor 
kitchen,  with  its  dim  corners  full  of  "  truck  " 
and  its  lights  and  shadows,  will  be  seen  no 
more. 

The  old  stage-road  went  gayly  along  a  bit 
of  high  plain,  and  then,  without  the  slightest 
hesitation  or  circumlocution,  dropped  off  into 
the  canon  of  Moore's  Creek.  These  reckless 
old  pioneer  roads  give  one  a  vivid  idea  of  the 
race  for  possession  of  a  new  mining-camp, 
and  of  the  pluck  it  took  to  win.  At  the 
"freeze-out"  stage-passengers  probably  got 
out  and  walked,  and  the  driver  "rough- 
locked"  the  wheels;  but  the  horsemen  of 
that  new  country  doubtless  took  a  fresh  hitch 
on  their  cinches  and  went  jouncing  down 
the  breakneck  grade,  with  countenances  as 
calm  as  those  of  the  illustrious  riders  of 
bronze  and  marble  horses  we  see  in  the  public 
squares,  unless  they  were  tired  of  the  saddle 
and  walked  down  to  rest  themselves,  —  never 
their  horses. 

Jack's  short  legs  were  getting  numb  with 
pressing  the  saddle,  and  he  was  glad  to  walk, 


62  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

and  to  linger  on  his  way  down  the  wild  descent 
into  the  canon.  It  was  the  middle  of  Septem- 
ber; Moore's  Creek  had  not  more  than  enough 
water  left  to  float  the  "  Chinaman's  drive  "  of 
cord-wood,  cut  higher  up  on  its  banks.  Its 
waters,  moreover,  were  turbid  with  muddy 
tailings  emptied  into  them  from  the  sluice- 
boxes  of  the  placer-miners  who  had  been 
working  all  summer  on  the  bars.  Above 
Moore's  Creek  the  water  of  the  river  is  clear 
as  that  of  a  trout-stream  and  iridescent  with 
reflections  from  sky  and  shore ;  but  after  its 
union  with  that  ill-fated  stream  it  is  obliged 
to  carry  the  poor  creek's  burden,  and  its  own 
bright  waters  thenceforth  wear  the  stain  of 
labor.  A  breath  of  coolness,  as  of  sunless 
rocks  and  damp,  spicy  shade,  came  up  to 
them  from  the  canon ;  and  a  noise  of  waters, 
mingled  with  queer,  discordant  cries.  It  was 
dinner-time  at  the  Chinamen's  camp  and  word 
was  being  passed  up  stream,  from  man  to 
man,  calling  the  wood-drivers  to  leave  their 
work.  They  were  not  the  sleek-braided, 
white-bloused,  silk-sashed  Chinese  of  the 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  63 

house-servant  variety.  They  had  wild  black 
hair,  rugged,  not  fat,  sleepy  faces,  and  little 
clothing  except  the  boots, —  store  boots,  in 
which  a  Chinaman  is  queerer  than  in  anything 
except  a  store  hat.  They  struggled  with  the 
jam  of  cord-wood  as  if  it  were  some  sort  of 
water-prey  they  had  hunted  down,  and  were 
now  meeting  at  bay,  spearing,  thrusting, 
hooking  with  their  long  boat-hooks,  skipping 
from  rock  to  rock  in  midstream,  hoarse  with 
shouting. 

The  party  had  now  left  the  stage-road  and 
turned  down  the  pack-trail  along  the  creek 
toward  its  junction  with  the  river.  The  pack- 
trail  here  crosses  the  creek  by  a  bridge  high 
above  the  stream ;  the  bridge  was  good 
enough,  but  it  was  a  question  whether  Mrs. 
O'Dowd,  with  her  known  prejudices,  could  be 
induced  to  go  over  it.  It  was  quickly  decided 
to  get  a  "good  ready,"  as  Jack  said,  and 
hustle  the  old  lady  down  the  trail  between 
two  of  the  horses  and  crowd  her  on  the  bridge 
before  she  had  time  to  make  up  that  remark- 
able mind  of  hers.  This  simple  plan  was 


64  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

carried  out  with  enthusiasm  on  the  part  of  all 
but  Mrs.  O'D.  herself. 

Soon  after  leaving  Giles's,  they  had  met  a 
wagon-load  of  people  townward  bound  from 
Gillespie's,  the  beautiful  river  ranch  above 
Moore's  Creek.  Mr.  Gilmour  had  stopped 
them  to  inquire  if  a  pack-animal  and  two 
riding  animals,  mules  or  horses,  could  be  sent 
from  the  ranch  up  to  the  fishing-camp,  on  a 
day  set  for  the  journey  home  ;  for  the  mules 
from  Turner's  were  to  go  back  that  same  day, 
to  start  the  next  day  but  one,  as  part  of  a 
pack-train  bound  for  Atlanta. 

The  people  in  the  wagon  "  could  n't  say." 
Most  of  the  horses  were  out  on  the  range ; 
those  at  the  ranch  were  being  used  for  haul- 
ing peaches  to  town,  fording  Moore's  Creek 
and  the  river,  and  scaling  the  "  freeze-out." 
But  Mr.  Gillespie  himself  was  at  home ;  the 
travelers  had  better  stop  on  the  way  up  and 
find  out. 

So,  after  crossing  the  bridge  and  gaining 
the  good  trail  along  the  river-bank,  Mr.  Dane 
spurred  on  ahead  and  forded  the  river,  to 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  65 

make  the  necessary  inquiries  at  the  ranch. 
Gillespie's  is  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river 
from  the  packer's  trail.  It  is  most  beautiful 
with  the  sun  in  the  western  sky,  its  hills  and 
water-front  of  white  beech  and  pine  trees  all  in 
shadow,  and  a  broad  reflection  floating  out 
into  the  river  at  its  feet. 

The  sun  was  still  high  and  the  shadows 
were  short;  but  the  river  ranch  was  a  fair 
picture  of  a  frontier  home  as  they  looked 
back  at  it  passing  by  on  the  other  side,  —  the 
last  home  they  should  see  on  the  wild  way 
they  were  taking. 

The  trail  went  winding  up  and  up,  and 
still  higher,  until  they  were  far  above  the 
river  and  could  see,  beyond  the  still  reflec- 
tions that  darkened  it  by  Gillespie's,  the  white- 
whipped  waters  of  the  rapids  above.  And 
the  higher  they  went,  the  more  hills  beyond 
hills  rose  along  the  horizon  widening  their 
view. 

Mr.  Dane  had  rejoined  the  party,  with  a 
satisfactory  report  from  the  ranch.  He  rode 
ahead  on  his  blue-roan  Indian  pony  twirling 


66  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

his  romdl,  a  long  leathern  strap  attached  to 
the  bridle,  the  end  divided  like  a  double  whip- 
lash by  means  of  which  and  a  pair  of  heavy 
blunt  spurs  "Blue  Pete"  and  his  rider  had 
come  to  a  perfect  understanding.  Blue  Pete 
was  a  sulky  little  brute,  with  a  broad  white 
streak  down  his  nose  and  a  rather  vicious  eye, 
but  he  was  tough  and  unsensitive  and  minded 
his  business. 

Next  came  Jack's  mamma  on  the  "  mule 
that  would  go  "  —  with  a  will,  as  far  as  Tur- 
ner's, —  but  after  that  needed  the  usual  en- 
couragement ;  a  gentle-paced  creature  though, 
and  sure-footed  on  a  bad  trail.  Then  came 
Jack  on  Mrs.  O'Dowd.  The  poor  old  girl  had 
been  vigorously  cinched  and  it  was  n't  becom- 
ing to  her  figure ;  but  those  were  bad  places, 
for  a  saddle  to  turn,  even  with  an  active, 
eight-year-old  boy  on  it. 

The  boy  was  deeply  content,  gazing  about 
him  at  the  river,  the  hills,  the  winding  trail 
ahead,  and  serenely  poking  up  Mrs.  O'Dowd 
with  his  one  spur  in  response  to  the  packer's 
often-repeated  command  to  "  Keep  her  up  !  " 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  67 

When  Mrs.  O'Dowd  refused  to  be  kept  up 
Jack's  father  made  a  rush  at  her  —  a  kind  of 
business  his  good  horse  Billy  must  have  de- 
spised, for  Billy  had  points  that  indicated 
better  blood  than  that  which  is  usually  found 
in  the  veins  of  those  tough  little  "rustlers" 
of  the  desert  and  the  range.  He  loved  to 
lead  on  a  hard  trail,  with  his  long,  striding 
walk,  his  cheerful,  well-opened  eyes  to  the 
front.  He  was  gentle,  but  he  was  also  scorn- 
ful ;  he  was  not  a  "  lady's  animal ;  "  he  had 
a  contempt  for  paltry  little  objectless  canters 
over  the  hills  with  limp-handed  women  and 
children  flopping  about  on  his  back.  He 
liked  to  feel  there  was  work  ahead;  a  long 
climb  and  a  bad  trail  did  not  frighten  him  ; 
he  looked  his  best  when  he  was  breasting  a 
keen  ascent  with  the  wind  of  the  summit 
parting  his  thin  forelock,  his  ears  pointed 
forward,  his  breath  coming  quick  and  deep, 
his  broad  haunches  working  under  the  saddle. 
Poor  work  indeed  he  must  have  thought  it, 
hustling  a  lazy,  sulky  old  donkey  along  a  trail 
that  was  as  nothing  to  his  own  sinewy  legs. 


68  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

After  Billy  came  the  pack-mule,  driven 
by  the  man  from  Turner's,  a  square- jawed, 
bronzed  young  fellow,  mounted  also  on  a 
mule  and  conversing  amicably  with  John 
Brown.  The  lunch-bag  had  been  passed 
down  the  line,  but  there  was  no  halt,  except 
for  water  at  the  crossing  of  a  little  gulch. 
The  trail  wound  in  and  out  among  the  spurs 
of  the  hills  and  up  and  down  the  rock-faced 
heights.  They  passed  a  roofless  cabin,  once 
the  dwelling  of  some  placer-miners,  and  farther 
on  the  half-obliterated  ditch  they  had  built 
leading  to  the  deserted  bars,  where  a  few  gray, 
warped  sluice-boxes  were  falling  to  pieces  in 
the  sun. 

Between  two  and  three  o'clock  they  came 
in  sight  of  some  large  pine-trees,  sheltering  a 
half  circle  of  white  sand  beach  that  sloped 
smoothly  to  the  river.  Above  the  pines 
a  granite  cliff  rose,  two  hundred  and  fifty 
feet  of  solid  rock  against  a  hill  five  hundred 
or  more  feet  higher,  that  shut  off  the  morning 
sun.  Between  the  cliff  and  the  lava  bluffs 
opposite,  the  eastern  and  western  shadows 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  69 

nearly  met  across  the  river.  There  were 
deep,  still  pools  among  the  rocks  near  shore, 
where  the  large  trout  congregate.  Below  the 
shadowed  bend,  the  river  spread  out  again 
suddenly  in  the  sunlight  that  flashed  white 
as  silver  on  the  ripples  of  a  gravelly  bar. 
This  was  the  spot  chosen  at  sight  for  the 
fishing-camp. 

A  bald  eagle  perched  on  a  turret  of  the 
lava  bluffs  across  the  river  watched  the  party 
descending  the  trail.  At  the  report  of  a  rifle 
echoing  among  the  rocks,  he  rose  and  wheeled 
away  over  the  pine-trees  without  hurrying 
himself  or  dropping  a  single  feather  in 
acknowledgment  of  the  shot.  It  was  a  dig- 
nified, rather  scornful  retreat. 

Where  the  trail  hugs  the  cliff  closest  on 
its  way  around  the  bend,  it  passes  under  a 
big  overhanging  rock.  No  one,  I  am  sure, 
ever  rode  under  it  for  the  first  time  without 
looking  up  at  the  black  crack  between  it  and 
the  cliff,  and  wondering  how  far  up  the  crack 
goes,  and  when  the  huge  mass  will  fall.  There 
is  a  story  that  the  Bannock  braves,  following 


70  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

this  trail  on  the  war-path,  always  fired  a 
passing  arrow  up  into  the  crack,  —  perhaps 
out  of  the  exuberance  of  youth  and  war-paint, 
perhaps  to  propitiate  the  demon  of  the  rocks, 
lest  he  should  drop  one  of  his  superfluous 
boulders  on  their  feathered  heads.  The 
white  men  who  followed  the  trail  after  the 
Indians  had  left  it,  amused  themselves  by 
shooting  at  the  arrows  and  dislodging  them 
from  the  crack.  The  story  must  be  true, 
because  there  are  no  arrows  left  in  the  crack ! 
Jack  stared  up  at  it  many  times,  and  never 
could  see  one. 

So  now  they  were  at  home  for  a  week  in 
the  wilderness.  Jack  followed  Brown  about 
as  he  was  "  making  camp,"  cutting  tent-pegs 
and  poles  and  putting  up  the  old  A-tent, 
which  had  seen  service  in  the  army  and  in 
many  frontier  camps  since  it  was  "  con- 
demned "  and  sold  at  quartermaster's  sale. 

The  man  from  Turner's  had  taken  another 
bite  of  lunch  and  returned  with  his  animals. 
He  bade  Jack  to  watch  for  him  as  he  passed 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  71 

the  camp,  day  after  to-morrow,  with  his  mule- 
train  for  Atlanta. 

The  kitchen  was  unpacked  down  on  the 
beach  and  the  fireplace  chosen,  —  a  big, 
wedge-shaped  rock,  —  in  the  lee  of  which 
John  built  a  fire,  not  for  warmth,  but  for  the 
sake  of  a  good  bed  of  coals  for  cooking.  Mrs. 
Gilmour  was  resting  in  the  tent,  under  the 
pine-trees.  Mr.  Gilmour  had  gone  up  the 
river  to  catch  some  trout  for  supper. 

After  four  o'clock  the  sun  left  the  river 
bank,  but  all  the  colors  were  distinct  and 
strong,  —  the  white  beach,  the  dark  pine 
boughs  against  the  sky,  the  purple  colors  in 
the  rocks,  and  the  spots  of  pale  green  and 
yellow  lichen  on  them,  the  changing  tints  in 
the  dark  water  swinging  smoothly  around 
the  bend  and  then  flashing  out  into  a  broad 
sheet  of  silvery  sparkles  over  the  bar.  It  was 
as  if  it  went  gravely  around  the  shadowy  bend, 
and  then  broke*  out  laughing  in  the  bright 
light 

As  it  grew  darker,  the  kitchen  fire  began 
to  glow  red  against  the  big  gray  rock.  In 


72  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

front  of  it  John  was  stooping  to  heap  coals 
on  the  lid  of  the  bake-kettle,  where  the  bread 
was  spread  in  a  thin,  round  cake  for  cooking. 

There  were  three  big  trout  for  supper  and 
four  or  five  little  ones.  The  big  ones  were  a 
noble  weight  to  tell  of,  but  the  little  ones 
tasted  the  best  when  they  were  taken  out  of 
the  bake-kettle  on  hot  tin  plates  and  served 
with  thin  slices  of  bacon  and  camp  bread. 

The  horses  had  been  turned  loose  up  the 
trail  but  now  came  wandering  back,  Billy 
leading,  followed  by  Pete,  who  was  hobbled 
but  managed  to  keep  up  with  him,  and  Mrs. 
O'Dowd  meandering  meekly  in  the  rear. 
They  were  on  their  way  home,  having  decided 
that  was  the  best  place  to  pass  the  night,  but 
John  turned  them  back.  After  supper  he 
watered  them  at  the  river  and  took  them  up 
the  trail  to  a  rudely  fenced  inclosure  on  the 
bluffs,  where  there  was  better  pasture. 

Sleepy-time  for  Jack  came  very  soon  after 
supper,  but  as  the  tent  was  some  distance 
from  the  camp-fire, — a  lonesome  bedroom  for 
a  little  boy  to  lie  in  by  himself,  —  he  was 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  73 

rolled  up  in  a  blanket  and  allowed  to  sleep  by 
the  camp-fire.  The  last  thing  he  could  re- 
member was  the  sound  of  the  river  and  the 
wind  in  the  great  pine  boughs  overhead  and 
voices  around  him  talking  about  the  stars 
that  could  be  seen  in  the  night  sky  between 
the  fire-illumined  tree  branches.  The  great 
boughs  moved  strangely  in  the  hot  breath  of 
the  fire  that  lit  them  from  below.  The  sky 
between  looked  black  as  ink  and  the  stars 
blazed  far  and  keen.  John  was  washing  up 
the  dishes  on  his  knees  by  the  light  of  a 
candle  fastened  in  a  box  set  upon  end  to 
shield  it  from  draughts.  Jack  watched  the 
light  shining  up  into  his  face  and  on  his 
hands  as  he  moved  them  about.  It  seemed  as 
if  he  had  slept  but  a  moment,  when  they  were 
shaking  him  and  trying  to  stand  him  on  his 
feet  and  he  was  stumbling  along  to  the  tent 
with  his  father's  arm  around  him. 

How  they  crawled  about  in  the  low  tent,  by 
the  light  of  a  candle  fastened  by  its  own  drip- 
pings to  a  stone,  and  took  off  a  few  clothes 
and  put  on  more  (for  the  September  nights 


74  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

were  cold) ;  how  cosy  it  was,  lying  down  in  his 
blankets  inside  the  white  walls  of  the  tent 
with  the  curtain  securely  tied  against  the 
wind,  with  his  father  close  beside  him  and  his 
father's  gun  on  the  outside  within  reach  of  an 
outstretched  hand ;  how  the  light  went  out 
and  the  river  sounded  on  and  some  twigs 
scraped  against  the  tent  in  the  wind,  —  this  is 
about  all  Jack  can  remember  of  his  first  night 
under  canvas. 

The  morning  was  gray  and  cold.  The  sun 
had  been  up  several  hours  before  it  was  seen 
in  the  camp.  Mr.  Gilmour  and  Mr.  Dane 
were  out  with  the  earliest  light  for  trout. 
Jack  was  the  next  to  leave  the  tent  and  go 
shivering  down  to  the  river  to  wash,  and  then 
run  to  warm  his  red  hands  and  button  his 
jacket  at  the  kitchen  fire,  where  John  was 
again  cooking  bread.  John  and  Mr.  Dane  had 
slept  on  the  beach  with  only  the  pine  boughs 
for  a  roof  and  saddle-bags  for  a  pillow. 

When  Mrs.  Gilmour  appeared,  last  of  all, 
Jack  was  just  finishing  his  second  chunk  of 
last  night's  bread,  leaning  against  the  angle 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  75 

of  the  rock  fireplace  out  of  the  smoke  that 
made  a  pale  blue  wavering  flight  upward  and 
aslant  the  dark  pine  boughs. 

The  fishermen  had  returned  with  trout,  but 
not  a  surfeit  of  trout,  for  breakfast.  The 
bread  was  taken  out  of  the  bake-kettle  and 
the  trout  put  in  to  plump  up  in  their  own 
steam  over  the  coals.  The  coffee  smelled  de- 
liciously  in  the  sweet,  cold  air.  The  broiled 
ham  was  welcome,  even  after  a  first  course  of 
trout,  and  Jack  was  good  for  a  third  of  bread 
and  honey.  He  could  use  his  fingers  and 
wipe  up  the  honey  with  the  broken  bread 
until  his  tin  plate  shone,  not  to  speak  of  his 
countenance,  and  nobody  observed  him  except 
to  smile. 

But  something  had  happened  that  morning 
besides  breakfast.  Mr.  Dane  had  lost  a  tre- 
mendous trout,  after  playing  him  a  long  time 
and  tiring  him  out.  He  had  been  fishing  from 
a  rock,  with  deep  water  all  around  him.  The 
big  fish  seemed  quite  still  and  tame  as  he  was 
drawn  in,  but  as  his  tail  touched  the  rock, 
with  a  frantic  rebound  he  made  one  last 


76  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

plunge  for  the  water  and  got  off.  If  there 
had  been  but  a  beach  to  land  him  on  ! 

Then,  a  man  had  been  shot  the  evening  be- 
fore at  Atlanta,  the  big  mining-camp  of  the 
Saw-tooth  range ;  and  another  man  riding  a 
tired  horse  had  passed  the  camp  at  daybreak, 
on  his  way  to  Boise  for  a  surgeon.  The  horse 
he  had  started  with  from  Atlanta  had  given 
out  about  twenty  miles  from  that  place ;  he 
had  walked  ten  or  fifteen  miles  along  the 
mountain  trail  in  the  darkness  before  he  could 
get  another  horse.  He  wished  to  change  this 
for  one  of  the  horses  from  the  fishing-camp, 
but  they  were  back  on  the  bluffs  and  he  con- 
cluded to  go  on  and  change  at  Gillespie's.  He 
had  traveled  about  fifty  miles  that  night,  on 
horseback  and  on  foot,  over  a  trail  that  some 
of  us  would  not  enjoy  riding  over  by  day- 
light. 

His  wife  and  their  young  child  were  at  his 
horse-ranch  away  back  on  the  hills,  alone,  ex- 
cept for  some  of  the  cowboys.  He  had  gone 
up  to  Atlanta  to  attend  the  ball.  The  man 
who  had  been  shot  was  a  stranger  to  him,  — 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  77 

had  a  brother  in  Boise,  he  believed.  He  had 
breathed  his  horse  a  moment  while  he  talked 
to  John  and  took  a  bite  of  something  to  eat, 
and  then  went  on  his  way. 

It  was  strange  to  think  that  all  this  was 
part  of  those  dark  hours  of  the  night  that 
had  passed  so  peacefully  to  the  sleepers  on  the 
river  beach,  —  the  miners'  ball,  the  shooting, 
the  night  ride  in  haste,  the  wife  waiting  at 
the  lonely  ranch  in  the  hills  for  her  husband's 
return. 

The  day  passed  with  fishing  and  sketching 
and  eating,  and  beauty  of  sunlight  and 
shadow  on  rocks  and  trees  and  river. 

Brown  had  built  a  table  and  placed  boxes 
around  it  for  seats.  The  gray  rock  fireplace 
had  got  well  blackened,  and  the  camp  had 
taken  on  a  homelike  look.  Jack  had  gone 
for  a  glorious  walk  up  the  trail  with  Brown, 
to  see  if  the  fence  on  the  bluffs  was  all 
right,  and  if  there  was  a  way  down  to  the 
river  from  the  bluffs  by  which  the  horses 
could  go  down  to  drink.  There  was  one,  a 
rather  obscure  way ;  but  Billy  was  clever,  and 


78  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

Pete  was  a  "  rustler/'  and  Mrs.  O'Dowd  could 
be  relied  upon  to  follow  the  lead  of  her  bet- 
ters. But  they  did  not  seem  to  be  eating,  and 
Jack  fancied  they  looked  homesick  in  their 
high  pasture,  as  if  the  scenery  did  not  con- 
sole them  for  being  sent  off  so  far  from  camp. 

That  second  day  Mr.  Gilmour  went  fishing 
alone  down  the  river.  John  was  gathering 
firewood ;  the  boy  and  his  mother  were  in  the 
tent ;  Mr.  Dane  sat  in  the  doorway,  tending  a 
little  fire  he  had  made  outside,  and  reading 
aloud,  while  Mrs.  Gilmour  made  a  languid 
sketch  of  him,  in  his  red-hooded  blanket  robe. 
Mr.  Dane  was  the  first  to  hear  a  shout  from 
down  the  river.  He  threw  off  the  red  robe, 
seized  a  rifle,  and  ran  down  the  shore  in  the 
direction  Mr.  Gilmour  had  taken.  The  shout 
meant,  to  him,  game  of  a  kind  that  could  not 
be  tackled  with  a  fly-rod. 

In  a  moment  or  two  he  came  running  back 
for  more  cartridges.  Mr.  Gilmour  had  met  a 
black  bear,  and  they  were  going  after  him. 
John  followed  with  the  axe.  Some  time 
passed,  but  no  shots  were  heard.  At  last  the 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  79 

men  came  back,  warm  and  merry,  though  dis- 
appointed of  their  game.  The  bear  had  got 
away.  It  was  tantalizing  to  think  how  fat 
and  sleek  he  must  have  been,  after  his  sum- 
mer in  the  mountains.  There  would  be  no 
bear-steaks  for  supper  that  night,  and  no 
glossy  dark  skin  to  carry  back  in  triumph  to 
the  home  camp  and  spread  before  next  win- 
ter's hearth  wherever  the  house-fires  might 
be  lighted. 

Mr.  Gilmour  had  been  walking  down  the 
trail  when  he  saw  the  bear  ahead  of  him,  cross- 
ing the  high  flat  toward  the  trail  and  making 
straight  for  the  river.  If  both  had  continued 
to  advance,  there  would  have  been  a  meeting, 
and  as  Mr.  Gilmour  was  armed  only  with  a 
fly-rod  and  a  pistol,  he  preferred  the  meeting 
should  be  postponed.  Then  he  stopped  and 
shouted  for  Dane.  The  bear  came  on,  and 
Mr.  Gilmour  fell  back,  leisurely,  he  said,  to- 
ward camp.  He  did  not  care  to  bring  his 
game  in  alive,  he  said,  without  giving  the 
camp  due  warning,  so  he  shouted  again.  It 
was  the  second  shout  Dane  had  heard.  The 


80  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

way  of  his  retreat  led  him  down  into  a  little 
gulch,  where  he  lost  sight  of  the  bear. 

It  did  not  take  very  long  to  tell  the  story 
of  the  hunt,  and  then  Mr,  Gilmour  went  back 
to  his  fishing.  The  sun  came  out.  The  fire 
in  front  of  the  tent  was  a  heap  of  smoking 
ashes ;  the  magazine  story  palled ;  the  sketch 
was  pronounced  not  worth  finishing;  and  then 
the  pack-train  for  Atlanta  came  tinkling  and 
shuffling  down  the  trail.  Fourteen  sleek,  hand- 
some mules,  with  crisp,  clipped  manes,  like 
the  little  Greek  horses  on  ancient  friezes, 
passed  in  single  file  between  a  man  riding 
ahead  on  the  "bell-mare,"  and  another  bring- 
ing up  the  rear  of  the  train,  swinging  his 
leathern  "  blind  "as  he  rode.  This  one  was 
the  man  from  Turner's.  He  had  met  Mr. 
Gilmour  farther  down  the  river,  and  heard 
the  story  about  the  bear,  and  offered  to  leave 
his  dog,  which  he  said  was  a  good  bear-dog. 
But  the  dog  would  n't  be  left,  and  so  the 
picturesque  freight-train  went  its  way,  under 
the  Indian's  rock,  and  up  the  steep  climb  be- 
yond. High  above  the  river  they  could  be 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  81 

seen,  footing  with  neat  steps  the  winding  trail, 
their  packs  swinging  and  shuffling  with  a 
sidelong  motion,  in  time  to  the  regular  pace, 
while  the  bell  sounded  fainter  and  fainter. 

Bear  stories  were  told  by  the  camp-fire  that 
night;  and  Mr.  Dane  slept  with  his  rifle 
handy,  and  John  with  an  axe.  John  said  he 
was  a  better  shot  with  an  axe  than  with  a  rifle. 
Jack  thought  he  should  dream  of  bears,  but 
he  did  n't.  The  next  morning  he  went  with 
John  Brown  up  to  the  high  pasture  to  bring 
down  one  of  the  horses.  Brown  was  to  ride 
down  to  Gillespie's  and  make  sure  of  trans- 
portation for  the  party  home,  the  next  day 
but  one. 

Jack  had  the  happiness  of  riding  Billy  bare- 
backed down  the  trail,  following  John  on 
Pete,  Mrs.  O'Dowd,  as  usual,  in  the  rear. 
Mr.  Gilmour  was  surprised  to  see  all  the 
animals  coming  down,  and  he  noticed  at  once 
how  hollow  and  drooping  the  horses  looked. 
John  explained  that  they  had  evidently  not 
been  able  to  find  the  trail  leading  down  to 
the  river,  and  had  been  without  water  all  the 


82  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

time  they  had  been  kept  upon  the  bluffs. 
He  could  see  by  their  tracks  where  they  had 
wandered  back  and  forth  along  the  edge  of 
the  bluffs,  seeking  a  way  down.  How  glad 
they  must  have  been  of  that  deep  draught 
from  the  river,  that  had  mocked  them  so  long 
with  the  sound  of  its  waters !  No  one  liked 
to  find  fault  with  Brown,  who  was  faithful 
and  tender-hearted;  and  it  was  stupid  of 
horses,  used  to  the  range,  not  to  have  gone 
back  from  the  bluffs  and  followed  the  fence 
until  they  found  the  outlet  to  the  river.  They 
quickly  revived  with  water  and  food,  which 
they  could  once  more  enjoy  now  that  their 
long  thirst  was  quenched.  Brown  rode  Pete 
down  to  Gillespie's,  and  returned  in  the  after- 
noon with  word  that  Mr.  Gillespie  himself 
would  come  for  the  party  on  Saturday,  with 
the  outfit  required. 

The  evening  was  cool  and  cloudy  ;  twilight 
came  on  early,  and  Brown  cooked  supper  with 
the  whole  family  gathered  around  his  fire, 
hungrily  watching  him.  There  was  light 
enough  from  the  fire,  mingled  with  the  wan 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  83 

twilight  on  the  beach,  by  which  to  eat  supper. 
John  was  filling  the  tin  cups  with  coffee, 
when  horses'  feet  were  heard  coming  down 
the  trail  from  the  direction  of  Boise.  A  man 
on  a  gray  horse  stopped  under  the  Indian's 
rock  and  looking  down  on  the  group  on  the 
beach  below  asked  what  was  "  the  show  for  a 
bite  of  something  to  eat."  He  was  invited 
to  share  what  there  was,  and  throwing  the 
bridle  loose  on  his  horse's  neck  he  dropped 
out  of  the  saddle  and  joined  the  party  at  the 
table. 

He  was  the  man  from  Atlanta,  returning 
from  his  errand  to  Boise.  No  doctor  had 
been  willing  to  go  up  from  Boise,  so  he  said, 
and  the  friends  of  the  wounded  man  had 
telegraphed  to  C — ,  and  a  doctor  had  gone 
across  from  there.  The  messenger  had  stayed 
over  a  day  in  Boise  to  rest,  and  was  now  on 
his  way  home  to  his  ranch  in  the  hills.  He 
gave  the  details  of  the  shooting,  —  the  usual 
details,  received  with  the  usual  comments  and 
speculations  as  to  the  wounded  man's  re- 
covery, —  then  the  talk  turned  upon  sport, 


84  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

and  bear  stories  and  fish  stories  were  in  order. 
The  man  from  Atlanta  knew  what  good  hunt- 
ing was,  from  his  own  account.  He  told  how 
he  had  struck  a  bear  track  about  as  big  as  a 
man's  hand  in  the  woods  and  followed  it 
some  distance,  thinking  it  was  "  about  his 
size/'  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  had  come  upon 
a  fresh  track  about  as  big  —  he  picked  up  the 
cover  of  the  bake-kettle  —  "  as  big  as  that." 
Then  he  turned  around  and  came  home.  It 
was  suggested  (after  the  man  from  Atlanta 
had  gone)  that  the  big  track  he  saw  was 
where  the  bear  had  sat  down. 

It  was  now  deep  dusk  in  the  woods ;  only 
the  latest  and  palest  sky  gleams  touched  the 
water.  The  stranger  included  the  entire  party 
in  his  cordial  invitation  to  stop  at  his  place  if 
they  ever  got  so  far  up  the  river,  mounted  his 
horse  and  quickly  disappeared  up  the  trail. 
He  expected  to  reach  his  home  some  time  that 
night. 

The  next  day  was  the  last  in  camp.  It  was 
still  gray,  cold  weather,  and  the  tent  among 
the  pine-trees  looked  inviting,  with  a  sug- 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  85 

gestion  of  a  fire  outside;  but  there  were 
sketches  to  be  finished  and  last  walks  to  be 
taken  and  a  big  mess  of  trout  to  be  caught 
to  take  home.  Jack  had  a  little  enterprise  of 
his  own  to  complete,  —  the  filling  of  a  tin  can 
Brown  had  given  him  with  melted  pine  gum, 
which  hardened  into  clear,  solid  resin.  The 
can  was  nearly  full,  and  Jack  had  various 
experiments  in  his  mind  which  he  intended  to 
try  with  it  on  his  return.  Brown  had  told 
him  it  would  make  an  excellent  boot-grease 
mixed  with  tallow  —  and  if  he  should  want 
to  make  a  pair  of  Norwegian  snowshoes  next 
winter,  it  would  be  just  the  thing  to  rub  on 
the  bottom  of  the  wood  to  make  it  slip  easily 
over  the  snow. 

Brown  was  going  back  on  the  hills  to  try 
to  get  some  grouse  and  the  boy  was  allowed 
to  go  with  him.  They  tramped  off  together, 
and  the  walk  was  one  of  the  memorable  ones 
in  Jack's  experience ;  but  Jack's  mother  would 
not  have  been  so  contented  in  his  absence, 
had  she  known  they  were  coming  home  by 
way  of  Deer  Gulch,  one  of  the  most  likely 


86  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

places  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  camp  for  a 
meeting  with  a  bear. 

'  Mr.  Gilmour  was  the  enthusiast  about  fish- 
ing, and  so  it  happened  that  Mr.  Dane  was 
generally  the  one  to  stay  about  camp  if  John 
were  off  duty.  The  fishing  should  have  been 
good,  but  it  was  not,  partly  because  the 
Chinese  placer-miners  on  the  river  had  a 
practice  of  emptying  the  deep  pools  of  trout 
by  means  of  giant-powder,  destroying  a  hun- 
dred times  as  many  fish  as  they  ate.  The 
glorious  fishing  was  higher  up  the  river  and 
in  its  tributaries,  the  mountain  streams.  How- 
ever, not  a  day  had  passed  without  one  meal 
of  trout  at  least,  and  many  of  the  fish  were  of 
great  size,  and  an  enthusiast  like  Mr.  Gilmour 
cares  for  the  sport,  not  for  the  fish  ! 

The  last  camp-fire,  Jack  thought,  was  the 
best  one  of  all ;  it  was  built  farther  down  the 
beach,  since  a  change  of  wind  had  made  the 
corner  by  the  rock  fireplace  uncomfortable. 
A  big  log,  rolled  up  near  the  fire  on  its  wind- 
ward side,  made  an  excellent  settle-back,  the 
seat  of  which  was  the  sand  with  blankets 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  87 

spread  over  it.  The  company  sat  in  a  row 
facing  the  fire,  and  Mrs.  Gilmour  was  pro- 
vided with  a  tin  plate  for  a  hand-screen. 
Perhaps  they  all  were  rather  glad  they  were 
going  home  to-morrow.  Mrs.  Gilmour  wanted 
to  see  Polly,  the  sand  floor  of  the  tent  was 
getting  lumpy,  and  they  all  were  begin- 
ning to  long  for  the  wider  outlook  and  the 
fuller  life  of  the  home  camp  at  headquarters. 
Beautiful  as  the  great  pine-trees,  the  sheltered 
beach,  and  the  shadows  on  the  water  had 
looked  to  them  after  their  long,  hot  ride  over 
the  mountain  trail,  there  were  always  the 
granite  cliff  on  one  side  and  the  lava  bluffs 
on  the  other,  and  no  far-off  lines  for  the  eye 
to  rest  upon.  People  who  have  lived  in 
places  where  there  is  a  great  deal  of  sky  and 
a  wide  horizon  are  never  long  contented  in 
nooks  and  corners  of  the  earth,  however  lovely 
their  detail  may  be. 

At  all  events,  the  talk  was  gayer  that  last 
night  by  the  camp-fire  than  any  night  except 
the  first  one  of  their  stay.  At  last  one  of  the 
company  —  the  smallest  one  —  slid  quietly  out 


88  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

of  sight  among  the  blankets,  and  no  more  was 
heard  of  him  until  the  time  came  to  dig  him 
out,  and  restore  him  to  consciousness. 

After  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gilmour  and  Jack  — 
poor  little  sleepy  Jack  —  had  gone  down  the 
shore  to  their  tent,  Mr.  Dane  and  Brown 
rolled  the  log  settle  upon  the  fire.  It  burned 
all  night,  and  there  were  brands  left  with 
which  to  light  the  kitchen  fire. 

Breakfast  was  a  sort  of  "  clean-up,"  as  the 
miners  say.  The  last  of  the  ham,  the  last  of 
the  honey,  one  trout,  left  over  from  last  night's 
supper  which  the  company  quarreled  about, 
each  in  turn  refusing  it,  —  even  Jack,  who 
seldom  refused  anything  in  the  eating  line,  — 
and  leaving  it  finally  for  John,  who  perhaps 
suspecting  there  was  something  wrong  with 
it  threw  it  out  upon  the  beach. 

After  breakfast  everybody  fell  to  packing, 
except  Jack,  who  roamed  around,  with  his 
leggings  and  his  one  spur  on,  watching  for 
Mr.  Gillespie  and  the  animals. 

Mrs.  Gilmour  had  finished  her  small  share 
of  the  packing,  and  with  Jack  climbed  up 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  89 

among  the  rocks  in  the  shadow  of  the  cliff. 
Mr.  Gillespie  had  arrived  and  on  the  beach 
below  he  and  Brown  were  loading  the  pack- 
horse  with  the  camp  stuff. 

The  two  boxes  in  which  the  kitchen  was 
packed  went  up  first,  one  on  each  side  of  the 
pack-saddle,  set  astride  the  horse's  back,  and 
in  shape  something  like  a  saw-horse.  The 
boxes  were  balanced  and  made  fast  with  ropes. 
The  roll  of  blankets  filled  the  space  between 
them ;  an  axe  was  poked  in,  or  a  fishing-pole 
protruded  from  the  heap  ;  more  blankets  went 
up,  then  the  tent  was  spread  over  all  and  the 
load  securely  roped  into  place,  —  Mr.  Gillespie 
and  Brown,  one  on  either  side,  pulling  against 
each  other,  and  the  patient  old  horse  being 
squeezed  between. 

Mr.  Gillespie  had  brought  the  usual  "  lady's 
animal "  for  Mrs.  Gilmour  to  ride  which,  in 
the  West  always  means  an  article  of  horseflesh 
which  no  man  would  care  to  bestride,  but  on 
which  it  will  do  to  "  pack  "  women  and  chil- 
dren about. 

The  chief  event  of  the  journey  home  was 


90  AN  IDAHO  PICNIC 

the  fording  of  the  river,  once  above  Gillespie's 
and  once  below,  thus  avoiding  the  highest  and 
hottest  part  of  the  trail  which  they  would  pass 
at  midday.  Neither  Jack  nor  his  mother  had 
ever  forded  a  stream  on  horseback  before. 
The  sun  was  high,  the  breeze  was  strong,  the 
river  bright  and  noisy.  Giddily  rippling  and 
sparkling,  it  rushed  past  the  low  willows  along 
its  shore. 

Mrs.  O'Dowd  was  whacked  into  her  place  in 
the  line  between  Billy  and  the  lady's  animal, 
and  kept  her  feet,  if  not  her  temper.  And  so, 
in  due  time,  they  arrived  at  the  home  ford  and 
the  ferry. 

Brown  and  Mr.  Gillespie  took  the  animals 
across  the  ford,  but  the  others  were  glad  to 
exchange  the  saddle  for  the  boat.  Polly,  in  a 
fresh,  white  frock,  with  her  hair  blown  over 
her  cheeks,  was  watching  from  the  hilltop, 
and  came  flying  down  the  trail  to  meet  them. 
Every  one  said  how  Polly  had  grown,  and  how 
fair  she  looked  —  and  the  house,  which  they 
called  a  camp  for  its  rudeness,  looked  quite 
splendid  with  its  lamps  and  books  and  curtains, 


AN  IDAHO  PICNIC  91 

to  the  sunburnt,  dusty,  real  campers ;  and  as 
Jack  said,  it  did  seem  good  to  sit  in  a  chair 
again.  It  was  noticeable,  however,  that  Jack 
sat  lightly  in  chairs  for  several  days  after  the 
ride  home ;  but  he  had  not  flinched  nor  whined, 
and  everybody  acknowledged  that  he  had  won 
his  single  spur  fairly  well  for  an  eight-year-old. 


A  VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

JOHN  BROWN  had  concluded  to  "  quit  work 
and  go  to  mining."  Not  that  mining  is  not 
work ;  but  a  man  does  n't  get  so  tired  work- 
ing for  himself,  choosing  his  own  hours  and 
resting  when  he  pleases,  as  he  does  working  in 
another  man's  time.  It  is  like  picking  tame 
blackberries  inside  the  garden  fence  for  the 
family  table,  and  picking  wild  blackberries  in 
the  fields  and  hedgerows  and  eating  as  one 
goes.  Every  boy  knows  how  that  is ;  and 
some  of  these  good-natured,  wandering,  West- 
ern men  are  very  like  big  boys. 

John  was  still  the  teamster  at  the  engineers' 
camp  in  the  canon.  He  had  been  a  sailor  in 
his  native  Northern  seas.  He  had  been  a  fisher- 
man of  the  Skager  Rack ;  and  more  than  once, 
by  his  own  story,  he  had  been  driven  out  to 
sea,  when  drifting  from  his  trawls,  and  picked 
up  by  one  of  the  numerous  vessels  of  the  fish- 


A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP  93 

ing-fleet  that  is  always  lying  off  or  on  the 
entrance  to  the  strait.  He  had  been  a  teamster 
on  the  plains  where  the  Indians  were  "  bad." 
Once,  when  crossing  the  great  Snake  River 
plains,  he  had  picked  up  a  curious  stone  shaped 
by  the  Indians  which  he  recognized  as  a 
"  sinker/'  such  as  he  himself  had  made  and 
used  on  the  fishing-grounds  of  the  far  North. 
John  had  a  little  ranch  of  his  own,  and  he 
owned  half  a  house.  The  other  half  of  the 
house  was  on  the  land  of  the  adjoining  settler. 
The  two  men  had  taken  up  preemption  claims, 
side  by  side,  and  to  save  expense  had  built  a 
joint-dwelling  on  the  boundary  line  between 
the  two  claims.  Each  man  lived  in  his  own  side 
of  the  house  —  the  half  that  rested  on  his  land. 
John  had  lived  six  months  on  his  claim,  as  the 
law  requires  before  a  settler  can  secure  a  title 
to  his  land.  He  was  now  working  to  get  the 
money  to  improve  it  into  a  farm.  He  was  a 
bit  of  a  carpenter ;  and  in  many  odd  ways  he 
was  clever  with  his  hands,  as  fishermen  and 
sailors  almost  always  are.  Jack  Gilmour  pos- 
sessed a  riding- whip,  such  as  the  cowboys  call 


94  A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

a  "  quirt/'  which  John  had  braided  for  him, 
with  skill  and  economy,  out  of  leather  thongs 
cut  from  scraps  of  waste  leather,  old  boot-legs, 
or  saddle-straps,  discarded  by  the  camps. 

Such  a  companion  as  this,  so  experienced 
and  variously  gifted,  and  so  uniformly  gentle, 
was  sure  to  be  missed.  Jack  found  the  canon 
a  much  duller  place  without  his  friend.  He 
and  Charley  Moy,  the  Chinese  cook,  used  to 
discourse  about  John,  and  recount  his  virtues, 
much  as  we  linger  over  praises  of  the  dead  — 
although  John's  camp  was  but  five  miles  away, 
and  he  himself  in  good  health,  for  all  any  one 
knew  to  the  contrary. 

After  a  while,  Jack  got  permission  to  ride 
up  the  river  to  John's  camp  and  pay  him  a 
visit ;  and  he  was  to  be  allowed  to  make  the 
trip  alone.  Jack  had  been  promoted,  since  his 
fishing  expedition  of  two  summers  before,  from 
a  donkey  and  one  spur  to  a  pony  of  his  own, 
a  proper  boy's  saddle,  and  two  spurs,  all  in 
consequence  of  his  advancing  years  and  the 
increasing  length  of  his  legs.  The  pony  was 
called  "Lollo,"  for  just  when  he  came  the 


A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP  95 

children  had  been  reading  "  Jackanapes,"  and 
the  new  pony,  like  the  pony  in  the  story,  was 
"  red-haired."  He  had  belonged,  not  to  the 
gypsies,  but  to  the  Indians,  who  had  broken 
and  branded  him.  One  of  his  ears  was  clipped, 
and  the  brand  on  his  flank  was  a  circle  with  a 
bar  through  the  centre.  He  had  the  usual 
thick  mane  and  tail  of  a  (( cayuse,"  a  white 
nose,  and  four  white  feet. 

Now,  there  is  an  ancient  rhyme  which  says : 

"  One  white  foot,  buy  him ; 
Two  white  feet,  try  him ; 
Three  white  feet,  deny  him; 
Four  white  feet  and  a  white  nose, 
Take  off  his  hide  and  give  him  to  the  crows  ! " 

But  Lollo  shook  the  dust  of  the  trail  from 
his  four  white  feet,  in  defiance  of  the  crows ; 
nor  was  he  ever  known  to  hide  the  light  of  his 
white  nose  under  a  bushel,  except  when  there 
were  oats  in  the  bottom  of  it. 

Jack's  mother  advised  him  to  make  sure  of 
his  lunch  by  taking  it  with  him,  in  case  John 
might  be  absent  from  the  camp  in  the  hills. 
But  for  some  reason  (it  is  very  difficult  to  know 


96  A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

a  boy's  real  reasons)  Jack  preferred  to  take 
the  chances  of  the  trip  without  provisions. 

His  father  told  him  that  when  he  had  ridden 
as  far  as  John  Turner's,  by  the  river  trail,  he 
must  take  the  upper  trail  which  runs  along 
the  bluffs. 

As  it  turned  out,  this  was  mistaken  advice. 
The  upper  trail  was  not  a  good  one,  as  Jack 
soon  discovered ;  and  in  certain  places,  where 
it  was  highest  and  steepest  above  the  river,  it 
had  been  nearly  rubbed  out  by  the  passage  of 
herds  of  stock,  crowding  and  climbing  past 
one  another  and  sliding  over  the  dry  and 
gritty  slope. 

In  one  spot  it  disappeared  as  a  footing 
altogether,  and  here  Jack  was  obliged  to  dis- 
mount and  creep  along  on  all  fours,  Lollo  fol- 
lowing as  he  could.  A  horse  can  go,  it  is 
said,  wherever  a  man  can  go  without  using  his 
hands.  As  Jack  used  his  hands  it  was  hardly 
fair  to  expect  Lollo  to  follow ;  but  the  pony 
did  so.  These  Western  horses  seem  as  ready 
as  the  men  to  risk  themselves  on  dangerous 
trails,  and  quite  as  sure  of  what  they  are  about. 


A   VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP  97 

What  with  all  these  ups  and  downs,  the 
breeze  on  the  bluffs,  and  the  natural  state  of 
a  boy's  appetite  about  midday,  Jack  was 
hoping  that  lunch  would  be  ready  at  John's 
camp  by  the  time  he  reached  it;  and  it  is 
possible  that  he  wished  he  had  not  been  so 
proud,  and  had  taken  a  "  bite  "  in  his  pocket, 
as  his  mother  advised  him. 

John's  camp  was  in  a  gulch  where  a  cool 
stream  came  down  from  the  hills.  There 
were  shade  and  grass  and  flowers  in  the 
season  of  flowers.  The  prospect-holes  were 
higher  up  beneath  the  basalt  bluffs  which 
rise  like  palisades  along  the  river.  Earlier 
prospectors  had  driven  tunnels,  such  as  pris- 
oners dig  under  the  foundations  of  a  wall, 
some  extending  a  few  feet,  some  farther, 
under  the  base  of  the  bluffs.  John  was  push- 
ing these  burrows  farther  still  and  "  panning 
out "  the  dirt  he  obtained  in  his  progress. 

Jack  soon  found  the  sluice-boxes  that  John 
had  built,  and  the  "  head  "  he  had  made  by 
damming  the  little  stream,  but  he  could  not 
find  John  nor  John's  camp. 


98  A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

He  argued  with  himself  that  John  would 
not  be  likely  to  "  make  camp "  below  the 
pool  of  water;  it  was  clear  and  cold,  much 
better  for  drinking  than  the  murky  river 
water.  His  searching,  therefore,  was  all  up 
the  gulch  instead  of  down  toward  the  river ; 
but  nowhere  could  he  discover  a  sign  of  John 
nor  of  his  belongings. 

Jack's  mother  asked  him  afterwards,  when 
he  told  his  story,  why  he  did  not  call  or 
make  a  noise  of  some  kind.  He  said  that  he 
did  whistle,  but  the  place  was  so  "  still  and 
lonesome  "  that  he  "  did  not  like  the  sound 
of  it." 

His  hope  now  was  that  John  might  be  at 
work  in  one  of  the  tunnels  under  the  bluffs. 
So  he  climbed  up  there ;  and  by  this  time 
he  was  quite  empty  and  weak-hearted  with 
hunger.  He  had  a  fine  view  of  the  river 
and  its  shores,  rising  or  sinking  as  the  bluffs 
came  to  the  front,  or  gave  place  to  slopes  of 
dry  summer  pastures.  There  was  a  strong 
wind  blowing  up  there,  and  the  black  lava 
rocks  in  the  sun  were  like  heated  ovens.  The 


A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP  99 

wind  and  the  river's  faint  ripple,  so  far  below, 
were  the  only  sounds  he  could  hear.  There 
were  no  living  sounds  of  labor,  or  of  anything 
that  was  human  or  homelike. 

At  the  entrance  to  one  of  the  tunnels  he 
saw  John's  canvas  overalls,  his  pick  and 
shovel,  a  gold-pan,  and  a  wheelbarrow  of 
home  construction.  Jack  examined  the  latter 
and  saw  that  the  only  shop-made  part  of  it 
was  the  wheel,  an  old  one  which  John  must 
have  found,  and  that  John  by  his  own  in- 
genuity had  added  the  other  parts  out  of 
such  materials  as  he  could  find. 

The  sight  of  these  things,  lying  unused 
and  unclaimed  by  their  owner,  made  Jack 
feel  more  dismal  than  ever.  The  overalls,  in 
particular,  were  like  a  picture  of  John  him- 
self. The  whole  place  began  to  seem  strange 
and  awesome. 

Jack  crept  into  the  short  tunnels,  where  it 
was  light  even  at  the  far  end;  and  he  saw 
nothing  there,  either  to  explain  or  to  add  to 
his  fears.  But  the  long  tunnel  was  as  black 
as  night.  Into  that  he  dared  not  go. 


100  A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

He  looked  once  more  at  the  dreary  little 
heap  of  tools  and  clothing,  and  with  an  ache 
that  was  partly  in  his  heart,  partly  no  doubt 
in  the  empty  region  of  his  stomach,  he 
climbed  down  again  into  the  gulch,  mounted 
Lollo  and  rode  away. 

When  he  came  to  the  bad  place  on  the 
trail,  he  slid  down,  keeping  ahead  of  Lollo, 
who  shuffled  along  cautiously  behind  him. 
Lollo  would  not  have  stepped  on  Jack,  but 
he  might  have  slipped  and  fallen  on  him. 
However,  a  cayuse  on  a  bad  trail  attends 
strictly  to  business,  and  is  quite  safe  if  he 
can  keep  but  two  of  his  feet  on  firm  ground. 

If  Jack's  father  had  known  about  that 
place  on  the  trail  he  never  would  have  sent 
Jack  by  that  way ;  and  it  was  well  that  his 
mother  had  no  notion  of  it.  As  it  was,  they 
were  merely  surprised  to  see  the  boy  return- 
ing about  the  middle  of  the  hottest  part  of 
the  afternoon,  and  were  not  a  little  sorry  for 
his  disappointment  when  they  heard  the  story 
of  the  trip. 

Mrs.    Gilmour   shared    the   boy's   anxiety 


A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

about  John  ;  and  Charley  Moy,  while  he  was 
giving  Jack  his  dinner,  told  some  very  pain- 
ful stories  of  miners  done  away  with  on  their 
solitary  claims  for  the  sake  of  their  supposed 
earnings.  Mr.  Gilmour  said  there  might  be 
a  dozen  explanations  of  John's  absence ;  and, 
moreover,  that  Jack  had  n't  found  the  camp 
at  all,  and  the  camp  should  be  there,  or  some 
sign  of  its  having  been  there  must  remain  to 
indicate  the  spot. 

Still  the  boy  could  not  dismiss  his  fears, 
until  two  or  three  days  later  John  himself 
stopped  at  the  canon,  on  his  way  to  town, 
not  only  alive  but  in  excellent  health  and 
spirits. 

He  told  Jack  that  he  had  been  at  his  camp 
all  the  time  the  boy  was  searching  for  him ; 
but  the  camp  was  at  the  mouth  of  the  gulch, 
close  to  the  river,  where  he  had  found  a  spring 
of  pure  cold  water.  Very  near  the  spring 
was  a  miner's  shanty,  deserted  but  still  quite 
habitable.  The  advantages  of  house  and 
spring  together  had  decided  John  to  camp 
there,  instead  of  higher  up  and  nearer 


A   VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

to  his  ditches.  He  urged  Jack  to  make  the 
trip  again,  and  in  a  week  or  so  the  boy  re- 
peated his  visit. 

This  time  he  did  not  take  the  upper  trail. 
John  said  that  that  trail  was  only  used  at 
high  water  in  the  spring,  when  the  river  rose 
above  the  lower  trail. 

The  lower  trail  along  the  river  bank  was 
safe  and  pleasant,  and  not  so  hot  as  the 
upper  one ;  and  this  time  there  were  no  ad- 
ventures. Adventures  do  very  well  to  tell  of 
afterward,  but  they  do  not  always  make  a 
happy  journey. 

John  was  at  home,  and  seemed  very  glad 
to  see  the  boy.  He  took  him  up  on  the 
bluffs  to  show  him  his  workings,  and  Jack 
found  it  very  different,  up  there  by  the 
tunnels,  —  not  at  all  strange  and  anxious. 
He  did  not  mind  the  dark  tunnel  a  bit,  with 
John's  company  and  a  candle  to  guide  him. 

John  showed  him  the  under  surface  of  the 
bluffs,  exposed  where  he  had  undermined 
them  and  scraped  away  the  dirt.  These  lava 
bluffs  were  once  a  boiling  flood  of  melted 


A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP  103 

rock.  The  ground  it  flowed  over  and  rested 
upon  after  it  cooled  had  been  the  bed  of  a 
river.  In  its  soft  state  the  lava  had  taken 
the  impression  of  the  surface  of  the  river-bed, 
and  after  it  cooled  the  forms  remained  the 
same ;  so  that  the  under  surface  of  these 
ancient  bluffs  was  like  a  plaster  cast  of  the 
ancient  river-bed.  The  print  could  be  seen 
of  stones  smoothed  by  water,  and  some  of 
the  stones  were  still  embedded  in  the  lava 
crust. 

Now  this  river  came  down  from  the  moun- 
tains, where  every  prospector  in  Idaho  knows 
there  is  plenty  of  gold  for  those  who  can  dis- 
cover it.  John  argued  that  the  old  river-bed 
must  have  had,  mixed  with  its  sand,  fine  gold 
for  which  no  one  had  ever  prospected.  The 
new  bed  which  the  river  had  worn  for  itself 
at  the  foot  of  the  bluffs  probably  contained 
quite  as  much  gold,  sunk  between  stones  or 
lodged  in  potholes  in  the  rocks  (as  it  lodges 
against  the  riffles  in  a  sluice-box),  but  no  one 
could  hope  to  get  that  gold,  for  the  water 
which  covered  it.  The  old  river-bed  was 


104  A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

covered  only  with  rock,  which  "  stays  put " 
while  you  dig  beneath  it. 

So,  on  the  strength  of  this  ingenious  theory, 
John  was  digging  where  the  other  theorists 
had  dug  before  him.  He  was  not  getting 
rich,  but  he  was  "  making  wages  "  and  enjoy- 
ing himself  in  the  pleasant  camp  in  the 
gulch ;  and  as  yet  he  had  not  found  any  of 
the  rich  holes. 

He  made  a  great  feast  in  the  boy's  honor. 
The  chief  dish  was  stewed  grouse,  rolled  up  in 
paste  and  boiled  like  dumplings.  Jack  said 
those  grouse  dumplings  were  about  the  best 
eating  he  had  ever  "  struck."  They  also  had 
potatoes,  baked  in  the  ashes,  and  canned  vege- 
tables and  stewed  apples  and  baking-powder 
biscuits  and  honey  ;  and  to  crown  the  feast, 
John  made  a  pot  of  strong  black  coffee  and 
sweetened  it  very  sweet. 

But  here  the  guest  was  in  a  quandary.  He 
refused  the  coffee,  because  he  was  not  allowed 
to  drink  coffee  at  home;  but  he  could  see 
that  his  refusal  made  John  uncomfortable, 
for  there  was  no  milk;  there  was  nothing 


A    VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP  105 

else  that  he  could  offer  the  boy  to  drink  but 
water,  and  water  seemed  very  plain  at  a  feast. 

Jack  wondered  which  was  worse  —  for  a 
boy  to  break  a  rule  without  permission,  or  to 
seem  to  cast  reproach  upon  a  friend's  enter- 
tainment by  refusing  what  was  set  before 
him.  He  really  did  not  care  for  the  coffee  ; 
it  looked  very  black  and  bitter  ;  but  he  cared 
so  much  for  John  that  it  was  hard  to  keep  on 
refusing.  Still,  he  did  refuse,  but  he  did  not 
tell  John  his  reason.  Somehow  he  didn't 
think  that  it  would  sound  manly  for  a  big 
boy,  nearly  twelve  years  old,  to  say  he  was 
forbidden  to  drink  coffee. 

Afterward  he  told  his  mother  about  it,  and 
asked  her  if  he  had  done  right.  His  mother's 
opinion  was  that  he  had,  but  that  he  might 
have  done  it  in  a  better  way  by  telling  John 
his  reason  for  refusing  the  coffee.  Then  there 
would  have  been  no  danger  of  John's  sup- 
posing that  the  boy  refused  because  he  did 
not  like  that  kind  of  coffee. 

Jack's  little  problem  set  his  mother  think- 
ing how  often  we  do  what  is  right,  at  some 


106  A   VISIT  TO  JOHN'S  CAMP 

cost  to  ourselves,  perhaps,  but  do  it  in  such 
an  awkward,  proud  way,  that  we  give  pain  to 
others  and  so  undo  the  value  of  our  honest 
effort  to  be  good ;  and  how,  in  the  matter 
of  feasts,  it  is  much  easier  in  our  time  for  a 
guest  to  decline  anything  that  does  not  suit 
him  in  the  way  of  eating  and  drinking  than 
it  used  to  be  long  ago,  when  a  gentleman 
was  thought  not  to  have  "  dined  "  unless  he 
had  both  eaten  and  drunk  more  than  was  good 
for  him ;  and  how,  in  the  matter  of  rules,  it 
is  only  little  silly  boys  who  are  ashamed  to 
confess  that  they  are  not  their  own  masters. 
The  bravest  and  wisest  men  have  been  keepers 
of  simple  rules  in  simple  matters,  and  in 
greater  ones  respecters  of  a  loving  Intelligence 
above  their  own,  whose  laws  they  were  proud 
to  obey. 

The  courage  that  displays  itself  in  excesses 
is  happily  no  longer  the  fashion ;  rather  the 
courage  that  keeps  modestly  within  bounds, 
and  can  say  "no"  without  offense  to  others. 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CA&ON 

THE  long  season  of  fair  autumn  weather 
was  drawing  to  a  close.  Everybody  was  tired 
of  sunshine ;  there  had  been  nearly  six  months 
of  it,  and  the  face  of  nature  in  southern  Idaho 
was  gray  with  dust.  A  dark  morning  or  a 
cloudy  sunset  was  welcome,  even  to  the  chil- 
dren, who  were  glad  of  the  prospect  of  any 
new  kind  of  .weather. 

But  no  rain  came.  The  river  had  sunk  so 
low  in  its  bed  it  barely  murmured  on  the 
rocks,  like  a  sleeper  disturbed  in  his  dream. 
When  the  children  were  indoors,  with  win- 
dows shut  and  fire  crackling,  they  could  hear 
no  sound  of  water;  and  this  cessation  of  a 
voice  inseparable  from  the  life  of  the  canon 
added  to  the  effect  of  waiting  which  belonged 
to  these  still  fall  days. 

The  talk  of  the  men  was  of  matters  suited 
to  the  season.  It  was  said  the  Chinamen's 


108  NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON 

wood-drive  had  got  lodged  in  Moore's  Creek 
on  its  way  to  the  river,  there  being  so  little 
water  in  the  creek  this  year,  and  might  not 
get  down  at  all,  which  would  be  almost  a  total 
loss  to  the  Chinamen.  Charley  Moy  knew 
the  boss  Chinaman  of  the  "  drive,"  and  said 
that  he  had  had  bad  luck  now  two  seasons 
running. 

The  river  was  the  common  carrier  between 
the  lumber-camps  in  the  mountains  and  the 
consumers  of  wood  in  the  towns  and  ranches 
below.  Purchasers  who  lived  on  the  river- 
bank  were  accustomed  to  stop  their  winter's 
supply  of  firewood  as  it  floated  by.  It  was 
taken  account  of  and  paid  for  when  the 
owners  of  the  drive  came  to  look  up  their 
property. 

Every  year  three  drives  came  down  the 
river.  Goodwin's  log-drive  came  first,  at  high 
water,  early  in  the  summer.  The  logs  were 
from  twelve  to  twenty  feet  long.  Each  one 
was  marked  with  the  letters  M  H.  These 
were  the  first  two  of  Mr.  Goodwin's  initials, 
and  were  easily  cut  with  an  axe ;  the  final 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON  109 

initial,  G,  being  difficult  to  cut  in  this  rude 
way,  was  omitted ;  but  everybody  knew  that 
saw-logs  marked  M  H  belonged  to  Good- 
win's drive.  They  looked  like  torpedo-boats 
as  they  came  nosing  along  with  an  ugly 
rolling  motion  through  the  heavy  current. 

The  men  who  followed  this  first  drive  were 
rather  a  picked  lot  for  strength  and  endur- 
ance, but  they  made  slow  progress  past  the 
bend  in  the  canon.  Here  a  swift  current  and 
an  eddy  together  combined  to  create  what  is 
called  a  jam.  The  loggers  were  often  seen 
up  to  their  waists  in  water  for  hours,  breaking 
up  the  jam  and  working  the  logs  out  into  the 
current.  When  the  last  one  was  off  the  men 
would  get  into  their  boat  —  a  black,  flat- 
bottomed  boat,  high  at  stem  and  stern  like  a 
whaleboat — and  go  whooping  down  in  mid- 
current  like  a  mob  of  schoolboys  upon  some 
dangerous  sort  of  lark.  These  brief  voyages 
between  the  jams  must  have  been  the  most  ex- 
citing and  agreeable  part  of  log-driving. 

After  Goodwin's  drive  came  the  French- 
men's cord-wood  drive ;  and  last  of  all,  when 


110  NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON 

the  river  was  lowest,  came  the  Chinamen's 
drive,  making  the  best  of  what  water  was 
left. 

There  is  a  law  of  the  United  States  which 
forbids  that  an  alien  shall  cut  timber  on  the 
public  domain.  A  Chinaman,  being  an  alien 
unmistakably  and  doubly  held  as  such  in  the 
West,  cannot  therefore  cut  the  public  timber 
for  his  own  immediate  profit  or  use ;  but  he 
can  take  a  contract  to  furnish  it  to  a  white 
dealer  in  wood,  at  a  price  contingent  upon  the 
safe  delivery  of  the  wood.  But  if  the  river 
should  fail  to  bring  it  in  time  for  sale,  the 
cost  of  cutting  and  driving,  for  as  far  as  he 
succeeds  in  getting  it  down,  is  a  dead  loss  to 
the  Chinese  contractor,  and  the  wood  belongs 
to  whoever  may  pick  it  out  of  the  water  when 
the  first  rise  of  the  creek  in  spring  carries 
it  out. 

The  Chinese  wood-drivers  are  singular, 
wild-looking  beings.  Often  at  twilight,  when 
they  camped  on  the  shore  below  the  house, 
the  children  would  hover  within  sight  of  the 
curious  group  the  men  made  around  their  fire 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON  111 

—  an  economical  bit  of  fire,  sufficient  merely 
to  cook  the  supper  of  fish  and  rice. 

All  is  silence  before  supper,  in  a  camp  of 
hungry,  wet  white  men,  but  the  Chinamen 
were  always  chattering.  The  children  were 
amused  to  see  them  "  doing  "  their  hair  like 
women,  —  combing  out  the  long,  black,  witch- 
locks  in  the  light  of  the  fire  and  braiding 
them  into  pigtails,  or  twisting  them  into 
"  Psyche  knots."  They  wore  several  layers 
of  shirts  and  sleeveless  vests,  one  over  another, 
long  waterproof  boots  drawn  up  over  their 
knees,  and  always  the  most  unfitting  of  hats 
perched  on  top  of  the  coiled  braids  or  above 
the  Psyche  knots.  Altogether,  take  them 
wet  or  dry,  on  land  or  in  the  water,  no  male 
or  female  of  the  white  race  could  show  any- 
thing in  the  way  of  costume  to  approach 
them. 

The  cloudy  weather  continued.  The  nights 
grew  sharper,  and  the  men  said  it  was  too 
cold  for  rain ;  if  a  storm  came  now  it  would 
bring  snow.  There  was  snow  already  upon 
the  mountains  and  the  high  pastures,  for  the 


112  NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON 

deer  were  seeking  feeding-grounds  in  the 
lower,  warmer  gulches,  and  the  stock  had 
been  driven  down  from  the  summer  range  to 
winter  in  the  valleys. 

One  afternoon  an  old  man,  a  stranger,  was 
seen  coming  down  the  gulch  back  of  the 
house,  followed  by  a  pack-horse  bearing  a 
load.  The  gulch  was  now  all  yellow  and 
brown,  and  the  man's  figure  was  conspicuous 
for  the  light,  army-blue  coat  he  wore  —  the 
overcoat  of  a  private  soldier.  He  "  hitched  " 
at  the  post  near  the  kitchen  door,  and  un- 
covering his  load  showed  two  fat  haunches  of 
young  venison  which  he  had  brought  to  sell. 

No  peddler  of  the  olden  time,  unstrapping 
his  pack  in  the  lonely  farmhouse  kitchen,  could 
have  been  more  welcome  than  this  stranger 
with  his  wild  merchandise  to  the  children  of 
the  camp.  They  stood  around  so  as  not  to 
miss  a  word  of  the  conversation  while  Charley 
Moy  entertained  him  with  the  remnants  of  the 
camp  lunch.  The  old  buckskin-colored  horse 
seemed  as  much  of  a  character  as  his  master. 
Both  his  ears  were  cropped  half  off,  giving  a 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON  113 

sullen  and  pugilistic  expression  to  his  bony 
head.  There  was  no  more  arch  to  his  neck 
than  to  the  handle  of  a  hammer.  His  faded 
yellow  coat  was  dry,  matted  and  dusty  as 
the  hair  of  a  tramp  who  sleeps  in  haymows. 
Without  bit  or  bridle,  he  followed  his  master 
like  a  dog.  In  the  course  of  conversation  it 
appeared  that  the  cropped  ears  were  not  scars 
of  battle  nor  marks  of  punishment,  but  the 
record  of  a  journey  when  he  and  his  master 
were  caught  out  too  late  in  the  season,  and  the 
old  horse's  ears  had  both  been  frozen. 

The  children  were  surprised  to  learn  that 
their  new  acquaintance  was  a  neighbor,  resid- 
ing in  a  dugout  in  Cottonwood  Gulch,  only 
three  miles  away.  They  knew  the  place  well, 
had  picnicked  there  one  summer  day,  and  had 
played  in  the  dugout.  Had  not  Daisy,  the  pet 
fawn,  when  they  had  barred  him  out  of  the 
dugout  because  he  filled  up  the  whole  place, 
jumped  upon  the  roof  and  nearly  stamped  it 
in  ?  —  like  Samson  pulling  down  the  pillars  of 
the  temple  ?  But  no  one  had  been  living  there 
then.  The  old  man  said  he  used  the  dugout 


114  NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON 

only  in  winter.  It  was  his  town  house.  In 
summer  he  and  the  old  horse  took  their  free- 
dom on  the  hills,  hunting  and  prospecting  for 
mineral — not  so  much  in  the  expectation  of 
a  fortune  as  from  love  of  the  chances  and 
risks  of  the  life.  Was  it  not  lonely  in  Cotton- 
wood  Gulch  when  the  snows  came?  the  chil- 
dren asked.  Sometimes  it  was  lonely,  but  he 
had  good  neighbors :  the  boys  at  Alexander's 
(the  horse-ranch)  were  down  from  the  summer 
range,  and  they  came  over  to  his  place  of  an 
evening  for  a  little  game  of  cards,  or  he  went 
over  to  their  place.  He  would  be  very  glad, 
however,  of  any  old  newspapers  or  novels  that 
might  be  lying  around  camp ;  for  he  was  short 
of  reading-matter  in  the  dugout. 

There  was  always  a  pile  of  old  periodicals 
and  "  picture  papers  "  on  Charley  Moy's  iron- 
ing-table ;  he  was  proud  to  contribute  his  entire 
stock  on  hand  to  the  evening  company  in  the 
dugout.  The  visitor  then  modestly  hinted  that 
he  was  pretty  tired  of  wild  meat :  had  Charley 
such  a  thing  as  the  rough  end  of  a  slab  of 
bacon  lying  around,  or  a  ham  bone  to  spare  ? 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON  115 

A  little  mite  of  lard  would  come  handy,  and 
if  he  could  let  him  have  about  five  pounds  of 
flour,  it  would  be  an  accommodation,  and  save 
a  journey  to  town.  These  trifles  he  desired 
to  pay  for  with  his  venison ;  but  that  was  not 
permitted,  under  the  circumstances. 

Before  taking  his  leave  the  old  hunter  per- 
suaded Polly  to  take  a  little  tour  on  his  horse, 
up  and  down  the  poplar  walk,  at  a  slow  and 
courteous  pace.  Polly  had  been  greatly  in- 
terested in  her  new  friend  at  a  distance,  but 
this  was  rather  a  formidable  step  toward  inti- 
macy. However,  she  allowed  herself  to  be 
lifted  upon  the  back  of  the  old  crop-eared 
barbarian,  and  with  his  master  walking  beside 
her  she  paced  sedately  up  and  down  between 
the  leafless  poplars. 

The  old  man's  face  was  pale,  notwithstand- 
ing the  exposure  of  his  life ;  the  blood  in  his 
cheek  no  longer  fired  up  at  the  touch  of  the 
sun.  His  blue  coat  and  the  yellow-gray  light 
of  the  poplar  walk  gave  him  an  added  pallor. 
Polly  was  a  pink  beside  him,  perched  aloft  in 
her  white  bonnet  and  ruffled  pinafore. 


116  NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON 

The  old  sway-backed  horse  sulked  along, 
refusing  to  "  take  any  hand  "  in  such  a  trifling 
performance.  He  must  have  felt  the  insult 
of  Polly's  babyish  heels  dangling  against  his 
weather-beaten  ribs,  that  were  wont  to  be  de- 
corated with  the  pendent  hoofs  and  horns  of 
his  master's  vanquished  game. 

Relations  between  the  family  and  their 
neighbor  in  the  dugout  continued  to  be  friendly 
and  mutually  profitable.  The  old  ex-soldier's 
venison  was  better  than  could  be  purchased  in 
town.  Charley  Moy  saved  the  picture  papers 
for  him,  and  seldom  failed  to  find  the  half  of 
a  pie,  a  cup  of  cold  coffee,  or  a  dish  of  sweets 
for  him  to  "discuss"  on  the  bench  by  the 
kitchen  door.  Discovering  that  antlers  were 
prized  in  camp,  he  brought  his  very  best  pair 
as  a  present,  bearing  them  upon  his  shoulders, 
the  furry  skull  of  the  deer  against  his  own, 
back  to  back,  so  that  in  profile  he  was  double- 
headed,  man  in  front  and  deer  behind. 

But  the  young  men  of  the  camp  were  am- 
bitious to  kill  their  own  venison.  The  first 
light  dry  snow  had  fallen,  and  deer-tracks  were 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON  117 

discovered  on  the  trails  leading  to  the  river. 
A  deer  was  seen  by  John  Brown  and  Mr.  Dane, 
standing  on  the  beach  on  the  farther  side,  in 
a  sort  of  cul-de-sac  formed  by  the  walls  of  the 
lava  bluffs  as  they  approached  the  shore. 
They  fired  at  and  wounded  him,  but  he  was 
not  disabled  from  running.  His  only  way  of 
escape  was  by  the  river  in  the  face  of  the 
enemy's  fire.  He  swam  in  a  diagonal  line 
down  stream,  and  assisted  by  the  current 
gained  the  shore  at  a  point  some  distance  be- 
low, which  his  pursuers  were  unable  to  reach 
in  time  to  head  him  off. 

They  followed  him  over  the  hills  as  far  and 
fast  as  legs  and  wind  could  carry  them,  but 
lost  him  finally,  owing  to  the  dog  Cole's  inju- 
dicious barking,  when  the  policy  of  the  men 
would  have  been  to  lie  quiet  and  let  the  deer 
rest  from  his  wound.  By  his  track  in  the  snow 
they  saw  that  his  left  hind  foot  touched  the 
ground  only  now  and  then.  If  Cole  had 
pressed  him  less  hard  the  deer  would  have  lain 
down  to  ease  his  hurt,  the  wound  would  have 
stiffened  and  rendered  it  difficult  for  him  to 


118  NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON 

run,  and  so  he  might  have  met  his  end  shortly, 
instead  of  getting  away  to  die  a  slow  and  pain- 
ful death. 

They  lost  him,  and  were  reproached  for  it, 
needlessly,  by  the  women  of  the  family.  One 
Saturday  morning,  when  Mr.  Dane  was  busy 
in  the  office  over  his  notebooks,  and  Jack's 
mother  was  darning  stockings  by  the  fire,  Jack 
came  plunging  in  to  say  that  John  Brown  was 
trying  to  head  off  a  deer  that  was  swimming 
down  the  river  —  and  would  Mr.  Dane  come 
with  his  rifle,  quick? 

Below  the  house  a  wire-rope  suspension 
bridge  for  foot  passengers  only  spanned  the 
river  at  its  narrowest  point,  from  rock  to 
rock  of  the  steep  shore.  Mr.  Dane  looked 
out  and  saw  John  Brown  running  to  and  fro 
on  this  bridge,  waving  his  arms,  shouting, 
and  firing  stones  at  some  object  above  the 
bridge  that  was  heading  down  stream.  Mr. 
Dane  could  just  see  the  small  black  spot 
upon  the  water  which  he  knew  was  the  deer's 
head.  He  seized  his  gun  and  ran  down  the 
shore  path.  Discouraged  in  his  attempt  to 
pass  the  bridge,  the  deer  was  making  for  the 


NOVEMBER  IN  THE  CANON  119 

shore,  when  Mr.  Dane  began  firing  at  him. 
A  stranger  now  arrived  upon  the  scene, 
breathless  with  running ;  he  was  the  hunter 
who  had  started  the  game  and  chased  it  till 
it  had  taken  to  the  river.  The  deer  was 
struggling  with  the  current  in  midstream, 
uncertain  which  way  to  turn.  Headed  off 
from  the  bridge  and  from  the  nearest  shore, 
he  turned  and  swam  slowly  toward  the  oppo- 
site bank.  The  women  on  the  hill  were 
nearly  crying,  the  hunt  seemed  so  hopeless 
for  the  deer  and  so  unfair:  three  men,  two 
of  them  with  guns,  combined  against  him, 
and  the  current  so  swift  and  strong !  It  was 
Mr.  Dane's  bullet  that  ended  it.  It  struck 
the  deer  as  he  lifted  himself  out  of  the  water 
on  the  rocks  across  the  river. 

The  venison  was  divided  between  the 
stranger  who  started  the  game  and  the  men 
of  the  camp  who  cut  off  its  flight  and  pre- 
vented its  escape. 

The  women  did  not  refuse  to  eat  of  it, 
but  they  continued  to  protest  that  the  hunt 
"was  not  fair;"  or,  in  the  phrase  of  the 
country,  that  the  deer  "  had  no  show  at  all." 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

LITTLE  Eastern  children,  transplanted  in 
their  babyhood  to  the  far  West,  have  to  leave 
behind  them  grandfathers  and  grandmothers, 
and  all  the  dear  old  places  associated  with 
those  best  friends  of  childhood. 

Of  our  canon  children,  Jack  was  the  only 
one  who  could  remember  grandfather's  house, 
although  Polly  had  romanced  about  it  so 
much  that  she  thought  she  could  remember. 
Polly  was  born  there,  but  as  she  was  taken 
away  only  eighteen  months  afterward,  it 's 
hardly  likely  that  she  knew  much  about  it. 
And  Baby  was  born  in  the  canon,  and  never 
in  her  life  had  heard  the  words  grandpapa 
or  grandmamma  spoken  in  the  second  person. 

For  the  sake  of  these  younger  ones,  de- 
prived of  their  natural  right  to  the  possession 
of  grandparents,  the  mother  used  to  tell 
everything  she  could  put  into  words  and 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    121 

that  the  children  could  understand  about  the 
old  Eastern  home  where  her  own  childhood 
was  spent,  in  entire  unconsciousness  of  any 
such  fate  as  that  which  is  involved  in  the 
words  "  Gone  West." 

The  catalogue  of  grandfather's  gates  always 
pleased  the  children,  because  in  the  canon 
there  were  no  gates,  but  the  great  rock  gate  of 
the  canon  itself,  out  of  which  the  river  ran 
shouting  and  clapping  its  hands  like  a  child 
out  of  a  dark  room  into  the  sunlight,  and 
into  which  the  sun  took  a  last  peep  at  night 
under  the  red  curtain  of  the  sunset. 

Grandfather's  gates  were  old  gates  long 
before  Jack  began  to  kick  out  the  toes  of  bis 
shoes  against  them,  or  practice  with  their 
wooden  latches  and  latchpins.  Most  of 
them  had  been  patched  and  strengthened  in 
weak  places  by  hands  whose  work  in  this 
world  was  done.  Each  had  its  own  particular 
creak,  like  a  familiar  voice  announcing  as 
far  as  it  could  be  heard  which  gate  it  was 
that  was  opening;  and  to  Jack's  eyes,  each 
one  of  the  farm  gates  had  a  distinct  and  ex- 


122     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

pressive  countenance  of  its  own,  which  he  re- 
membered as  well  as  he  did  the  faces  of  the 
men  who  worked  in  the  fields. 

Two  or  three  of  them  were  stubborn  ob- 
stacles in  his  path,  by  reason  of  queer,  un- 
manageable latches  that  would  n't  shove,  or 
weights  that  a  small  boy  could  n't  lift,  or  a 
heavy  trick  of  yawing  at  the  top  and  dragging 
at  the  bottom,  so  that  the  only  way  to  get 
through  was  to  squeeze  through  a  wedge- 
shaped  opening  where  you  scraped  the  side 
of  your  leg  and  generally  managed  to  catch 
some .  part  of  your  clothing  on  a  nail  or  on  a 
splinter.  Others  fell  open  gayly  on  a  down- 
hill grade,  but  you  had  to  tug  yourself 
crimson  in  order  to  heave  them  shut  again. 
Very  few  of  those  heavy  old  field  gates 
seemed  to  have  been  intended  for  the  conven- 
ience of  boys.  The  boy  on  grandfather's  farm 
who  opened  a  gate  was  expected  to  shut  it. 
If  he  neglected  to  do  so  he  was  almost  sure 
to  hear  a  voice  calling  after  him,  "  Hey, 
there !  Who  left  that  gate  open  ?  "  So  on 
the  whole  it  was  no  saving  of  time  to  slip 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    123 

through,  besides  being  a  strain  on  one's 
reputation  with  the  farm  hands. 

Some  of  the  gates  were  swinging  and 
creaking  every  day  of  the  year;  others  were 
silent  for  whole  months  together ;  others,  like 
the  road  gate,  stood  open  always  and  never 
creaked,  and  nobody  marked  them,  except 
that  the  children  found  them  good  to  swing 
upon  when  the  grass  was  not  too  long. 

The  road  gate  had  once  been  a  smart  one, 
with  pickets  and  gray  paint,  but  it  had 
stood  open  so  many  years  with  the  grass  of 
summer  after  summer  cumbering  its  long 
stride  that  no  one  ever  thought  of  repainting 
it,  any  more  than  they  would  of  decorating 
the  trunk  of  the  Norway  spruce  which  stood 
nearest  to  it,  between  it  and  the  fountain 
that  had  ceased  to  play  and  had  been  filled 
up  with  earth  and  converted  into  a  flower 
bed. 

The  road  gate  being  always  open,  it  follows 
that  the  garden  gate  was  always  shut.  The 
garden  was  divided  from  the  dooryard  by 
the  lane  that  went  past  the  house  to  the 


124     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

carriage-house  and  stable.  Visitors  sometimes 
spoke  of  the  lane  as  the  "avenue/'  and  of 
the  dooryard  as  the  "  lawn ;  "  but  these  fine 
names  were  never  used  by  grandfather  him- 
self, nor  by  any  of  the  household,  nor  were 
they  appropriate  to  the  character  of  the  place. 
The  dooryard  grass  was  left  to  grow  rather 
long  before  it  was  cut,  like  grandfather's 
beard  before  he  would  consent  to  have  it 
trimmed.  Dandelions  went  to  seed  and 
clover-heads  reddened.  Beautiful  things  had 
time  to  grow  up  and  blossom  in  that  rich, 
dooryard  grass,  before  it  was  swept  down  by 
the  scythe  and  carried  away  in  wheelbarrow 
loads  to  be  fed  to  the  horses.  It  was  toward 
night,  generally,  that  the  men  wheeled  it 
away,  and  the  children  used  to  follow  load 
after  load  to  the  stable,  to  enjoy  the  horses' 
enjoyment  of  it.  They  always  felt  that  the 
dooryard  grass  belonged  to  them,  and  yielded 
it,  at  the  cost  of  many  a  joy,  as  their  own 
personal  contribution  to  those  good  friends 
of  theirs  in  the  stable  —  Nelly  and  Duke 
and  Dan  and  Nelly's  colt  (which  was  gen- 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    125 

erally  a  five-year-old  before  it  ceased  to  be 
caUed  "  the  colt "). 

The  garden  gate  was  a  small  one,  of  the 
same  rather  smart  pattern  as  the  road  gate. 
The  grapevine  which  grew  inside  the  fence  — 
and  over,  and  under,  and  through  it — had 
superadded  an  arch  of  its  tenderest,  broadest, 
most  luminous  leaves,  which  spanned  the  gate- 
posts, uplifted  against  the  blue  sky,  and  was 
so  much  more  beautiful  toward  the  middle 
of  summer  than  any  gate  could  be,  that  no 
one  ever  looked  at  the  little  garden  gate  at 
all,  except  to  make  sure  that  it  was  shut. 

It  had  a  peculiar,  lively  click  of  the 
latch,  which  somehow  suggested  all  the  plea- 
sures of  the  garden  within.  The  remem- 
brance of  it  recalls  the  figure  of  John,  the 
gardener,  in  his  blue  denim  blouse,  with  a 
bunch  of  radishes  and  young  lettuces  in  his 
clean,  earthy  hands.  He  would  take  a  few 
steps  out  of  his  way  to  the  fountain  (it  had 
not  then  been  filled  up),  and  wash  the  tender 
roots,  dip  the  leaves  and  shake  them,  before 
presenting  his  offering  in  the  kitchen. 


126     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

There  was  another  figure  that  often  came 
and  went  when  the  garden  gate  clicked :  the 
little  mother,  the  children's  grandmother,  in 
her  morning  gingham  and  white  apron  and 
garden  hat,  and  the  gloves  without  fingers 
she  wore  when  she  went  to  cut  her  roses. 
Sometimes  she  wore  no  hat,  and  the  sun 
shone  through  her  muslin  cap.  It  came 
to  a  point  just  above  her  forehead,  and 
was  finished  with  a  bunch  of  narrow  rib- 
bon, pale  straw-color  or  lavender.  Her  face 
in  the  open  sunlight  or  under  the  shade 
of  her  hat  had  the  tender  fairness  of  one  of 
her  own  faintly  tinted  tea-roses.  Young  girls 
and  children's  faces  may  be  likened  to  flowers, 
but  that  fairness  of  the  white  soul  shining 
through  does  not  belong  to  youth.  The 
soul  of  a  mother  is  hardly  in  full  bloom  until 
her  cheek  begins  to  sink  a  little  and  grow 
soft  with  age. 

The  garden  was  laid  out  on  an  old-fash- 
ioned plan,  in  three  low  terraces,  each  a 
single  step  above  the  other.  A  long,  straight 
walk  divided  the  middle  terrace,  extending 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    127 

from  the  gate  to  the  seat  underneath  the 
grapevine  and  pear-tree;  and  another  long, 
straight  path  crossed  the  first  one  at  right 
angles  from  the  blackberry  bushes  at  the  top 
of  the  garden  to  the  arbor-vitse  hedge  at  the 
bottom.  The  borders  were  of  box,  or  polyan- 
thus, or  primroses,  and  the  beds  were  filled 
with  a  confusion  of  flowers  of  all  seasons, 
crowding  the  spaces  between  the  rose-bushes ; 
so  that  there  w*ere  literally  layers  of  flowers, 
the  ones  above  half  hiding,  half  supporting 
the  ones  beneath,  and  all  uniting  to  praise  the 
hand  of  the  gardener  that  made  them  grow. 
Some  persons  said  the  garden  needed  system- 
atizing; that  there  was  a  waste  of  material 
there.  Others  thought  its  charm  lay  in  its 
careless  lavishness  of  beauty  —  as  if  it  took 
no  thought  for  what  it  was  or  had,  but  gave 
with  both  hands  and  never  counted  what  was 
left. 

It  was  certain  you  could  pick  armf  uls,  apron- 
fuls,  of  flowers  there,  and  never  miss  them 
from  the  beds  or  the  bushes  where  they  grew. 

The  hedge  ran  along  on  top  of  the  stone 


128     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

wall  that  guarded  the  embankment  to  the 
road.  In  June,  when  the  sun  lay  hot  on  the 
whitening  dust,  Jack  used  to  lean  with  his 
arms  deep  in  the  cool,  green,  springy  mass  of 
the  hedge,  his  chin  barely  above  its  close-shorn 
twigs,  and  stare  at  the  slow-moving  tops  of  the 
tall  chestnut-trees  across  the  meadow,  and 
dream  of  journeys  and  of  circuses  passing, 
with  band  wagons  and  piebald  horses  and 
tramp  of  elephants  and  zebras  with  stiff  manes. 
How  queer  an  elephant  would  look  walking 
past  the  gate  of  Uncle  Townsend's  meadow ! 

When  the  first  crop  of  organ-grinders  began 
to  spread  along  the  country  roads,  Jack,  atilt 
like  a  big  robin  in  the  hedge,  would  prick  his 
ear  at  the  sound  of  a  faint,  whining  sweetness, 
far  away  at  the  next  house  but  one.  After  a 
silence  he  would  hear  it  again  in  a  louder  strain, 
at  the  very  next  house ;  another  plodding  si- 
lence, and  the  joy  had  arrived.  The  organ- 
man  had  actually  perceived  grandfather's 
house,  far  back  as  it  was  behind  the  fir-trees, 
and  had  stopped  by  the  little  gate  at  the  foot 
of  the  brick  walk.  Then  Jack  races  out  of 


THE  GATES   ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    129 

the  garden,  slamming  the  gate  behind  him, 
across  the  dooryard  and  up  the  piazza  steps, 
to  beg  a  few  pennies  to  encourage  the  man. 
He  has  already  turned  back  his  blanket  and 
adjusted  his  stick.  Will  grandmother  please 
hurry  ?  It  takes  such  a  long  time  to  find  only 
four  pennies,  and  the  music  has  begun ! 

All  the  neighbors'  children  have  followed 
the  man,  and  are  congregated  about  him  in 
the  road  below.  Looks  are  exchanged  between 
them  and  Jack,  dangling  his  legs  over  the  brink 
of  the  wall,  but  no  words  are  wasted. 

Then  come  those  moments  of  indecision  as 
to  the  best  plan  of  bestowing  the  pennies.  If 
you  give  them  too  soon,  the  man  may  pack  up 
the  rest  of  his  tunes  and  go  away ;  if  you  keep 
them  back  too  long,  he  may  get  discouraged 
and  go,  anyhow.  Jack  concludes  to  give  two 
pennies  at  the  close  of  the  first  air,  and  make 
the  others  apparent  in  his  hands.  But  the 
organ-man  does  not  seem  to  be  aware  of  the 
other  two  pennies  in  reserve.  His  melancholy 
eyes  are  fixed  on  the  tops  of  the  fir-trees  that 
swing  in  a  circle  above  Jack's  head,  as  he  sits 


130     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

on  the  wall.  "  Poor  man,"  Jack  thinks,  "  he 
is  disappointed  to  get  only  two  pennies !  He 
thinks,  perhaps,  I  am  keeping  the  others  for 
the  next  man.  How  good  of  him  to  go  on 
playing  all  the  same  !  "  He  plays  all  his  tunes 
out  to  the  end.  Down  goes  the  blanket. 
Jack  almost  drops  the  pennies  in  his  haste  to 
be  in  time.  The  man  stumps  away  down  the 
road,  and  Jack  loiters  up  the  long  path  to  the 
house,  dreamy  with  the  droning  music,  and 
flattered  to  the  soul  by  the  man's  thanks  and 
the  way  he  took  off  his  hat  when  he  said  good- 
day.  Nobody  need  try  to  make  Jack  believe 
that  an  organ-grinder  can  ever  be  a  nuisance. 

The  road  gate,  the  garden  gate,  and  the 
gate  at  the  foot  of  the  path  were  the  only 
gates  that  ever  made  any  pretense  to  paint. 
The  others  were  of  the  color  that  wind  and 
weather  freely  bestow  upon  a  good  piece  of 
old  wood  that  has  never  been  planed. 

Jack  became  acquainted  with  the  farm 
gates  one  by  one,  as  his  knowledge  of  the 
fields  progressed.  At  first,  for  his  short  legs, 
it  was  a  long  journey  to  the  barn.  Here 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    131 

there  was  a  gate  which  he  often  climbed  upon 
but  never  opened ;  for  within  its  protection 
the  deep  growl  of  the  old  bull  was  often 
heard,  or  his  reddish-black  head,  lowering  eye, 
and  hunched  shoulders  were  seen  emerging 
from  the  low,  dark  passage  to  the  sheds  into 
the  sunny  cattle-yard.  Even  though  nothing 
were  in  sight  more  awful  than  a  clucking 
hen,  that  doorway,  always  agape  and  always 
dark  as  night,  was  a  bad  spot  for  a  small  boy 
to  pass,  with  the  gate  of  retreat  closed  behind 
him  and  the  gate  of  escape  into  the  comfort- 
able, safe  barnyard  not  yet  open. 

The  left-hand  gate,  on  the  upper  side  of 
the  barn,  was  the  children's  favorite  of  all  the 
gates.  The  barn  was  built  against  a  hill,  and 
the  roof  on  the  upper  side  came  down  nearly 
to  the  ground.  The  children  used  to  go 
through  the  left-hand  gate  when,  with  one 
impulse,  they  decided,  "  Let  's  go  and  slide  on 
the  roof !  "  This  was  their  summer  coasting. 
Soles  of  shoes  were  soon  so  polished  that  the 
sliders  were  obliged  to  climb  up  the  roof  on 
hands  and  knees.  It  was  not  good  for  stock- 


132     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

ings,  and  in  those  days  there  were  no  "  knee- 
protectors  ; "  mothers'  darning  was  the  only 
invention  for  keeping  young  knees  inside  of 
middle-aged  stockings  that  were  expected  to 
"  last  out "  the  summer. 

It  was  a  blissful  pastime,  to  swarm  up  the 
roof  and  lie,  with  one's  chin  over  the  ridge- 
pole, gazing  down  from  that  thrilling  height 
upon  the  familiar  objects  in  the  peaceful 
barnyard.  Then  to  turn  round  carefully  and 
get  into  position  for  the  glorious,  downward 
rush  over  the  gray,  slippery  shingles !  It 
could  not  have  been  any  better  for  the 
shingles  than  for  the  shoes  and  stockings ; 
but  no  one  interfered.  Perhaps  grandfather 
remembered  a  time  when  he,  too,  used  to  slide 
on  roofs,  and  scour  the  soles  of  his  shoes  and 
polish  the  knees  of  his  stockings. 

The  upper  gate  had  another,  more  lasting 
attraction ;  it  opened  into  the  lane  that  went 
up  past  the  barn  into  the  orchards — the 
lovely,  side-hill  orchards.  Grandfather's  farm 
was  a  side-hill  farm  altogether,  facing  the 
river,  with  its  back  to  the  sunset.  If  you  sat 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHERS  FARM    133 

down  comfortably,  adjusting  yourself  to  the 
slope  of  the  ground,  the  afternoon  shadows 
stretched  far  before  you;  you  saw  the  low 
blue  mountains  across  the  river,  and  the  sails 
of  sloops  tacking  against  the  breeze.  One 
orchard  led  to  another,  through  gaps  in  the 
stone  fences,  and  the  shadow  of  one  tree  met 
the  shadow  of  its  neighbor,  across  those  long, 
sun-pierced  aisles.  The  trees  bent  this  way 
and  that,  and  shifted  their  limbs  under  the 
autumn's  burden  of  fruit.  The  children 
never  thought  of  eating  a  whole  apple,  but 
bit  one  and  threw  it  away  for  another  that 
looked  more  tempting,  and  so  on  till  their 
palates  were  torpid  with  tasting.  Then  they 
were  swung  up  on  top  of  the  cold  slippery 
loads  and  jolted  down  the  lane  to  that  big 
upper  door  that  opened  into  the  loft  where 
the  apple  bins  were.  Here  the  wagon  stopped 
with  a  heavy  creak.  Some  one  picked  up  a 
child  and  swung  it  in  at  the  big  door ;  some 
one  else  caught  it  and  placed  it  safely  on  its 
feet  at  one  side  ;  and  then  the  men  began  a 

'  O 

race,  —  the  one  in  the  wagon  bent  upon  fill- 


134     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

ing  a  basket  with  apples  and  hoisting  it  in  at 
the  door,  faster  than  the  man  inside  could 
carry  it  to  the  bin  and  empty  it  and  return 
for  the  next. 

These  bins  held  the  cider  apples.  The 
apples  for  market  were  brought  down  in  bar- 
rels from  the  orchards,  and  then  the  wagon 
load  of  apples  and  children  went  through  still 
another  gate  that  led  to  another  short  lane 
under  more  apple-trees,  to  the  fruit-house, 
where,  in  the  cool,  dim  cellar  that  smelled  of 
all  deliciousness,  the  fruit  was  sorted  and 
boxed  or  barreled  for  market.  And  in  the 
late  afternoon,  or  after  supper,  if  the  children 
were  old  enough  to  stay  up  so  late,  they  were 
allowed  to  ride  on  the  loads  of  fruit  to  the 
steamboat  landing. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  this  gate,  which 
led  to  the  fruit  cellar,  was  one  Jack  very  early 
learned  to  open.  In  fact,  it  was  so  in  the 
habit  of  being  opened  that  it  had  never  ac- 
quired the  trick  of  obstinacy,  and  gave  way  at 
the  least  pull. 

When  Jack  was  rather  bigger,  he  was  al- 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    135 

lowed  to  cross  the  road  with  his  cousin,  a  boy 
of  his  own  age,  and  open  the  gate  into  Uncle 
Townsend's  meadow.  This  piece  of  land  had 
been  many  years  in  his  grandfather's  posses- 
sion but  it  was  still  called  by  the  name  of  its 
earlier  owner.  Names  have  such  a  persistent 
habit  of  sticking  in  those  long-settled  commu- 
nities where  there  is  always  some  one  who 
remembers  when  staid  old  horses  were  colts 
and  gray-haired  men  were  boys,  and  when  the 
land  your  father  was  born  on  was  part  of  his 
grandfather's  farm  on  the  ridge. 

A  brook,  which  was  also  the  waste-way 
from  the  mill,  ran  across  Uncle  Townsend's 
meadow.  Sometimes  it  overflowed  into  the 
grass  and  made  wet  places,  and  in  these  spots 
the  grass  was  of  a  darker  color,  and  certain 
wild  flowers  were  finer  than  anywhere  else ; 
also  weeds,  among  others  the  purple,  rank 
"  skunk's  cabbage,"  which  the  children  ad- 
mired, without  wishing  to  gather. 

Water-cresses  clung  to  the  brookside;  in 
the  damp  places  the  largest,  whitest  bloodroot 
grew ;  under  the  brush  along  the  fences  and 


136     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

by  the  rocks  grew  the  blue-eyed  hepatica, 
coral-red  columbine,  and  anemones,  both  pure 
white  and  those  rare  beauties  with  a  pale  pink 
flush.  Dog-tooth  violets,  wild  geraniums, 
Solomon's  seal,  Jack-in-the-pulpit,  came  in  due 
season,  and  ferns  of  every  pattern  of  leaf  and 
scroll.  Later,  when  the  wet  places  were  dry, 
came  the  tall  fire-lilies  and  brown-eyed  Rud- 
beckias,  "  ox-eyed  daisies  "  the  children  called 
them,  together  with  all  the  delicate,  flowering 
grass-heads  and  stately  bulrushes  and  patches 
of  pink  and  white  clover,  —  and  all  over  the 
meadow  there  was  a  sleepy  sound  of  bees,  and 
shadows  with  soft  edges  lost  in  deep  waves  of 
grass. 

Of  course  the  brook  did  not  stop  at  the 
meadow.  It  went  on  gurgling  over  the 
stones,  dark  under  the  willows;  but  there 
were  no  more  gates.  The  brook  left  the  home 
fields  and  took  its  own  way  across  everybody's 
land  to  the  river.  That  was  a  long  walk, 
which  Jack  took  only  when  he  was  much 
older. 

Another  journey,  which  he  grew  up  to  by 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    137 

degrees,  was  that  one  to  the  upper  barn.  How 
many  times  over  did  he  repeat  his  instructions 
before  he  was  allowed  to  set  out :  "  Go  up  the 
hill,  past  the  mill,  until  you  come  to  the  first 
turn  to  the  left.  Turn  up  that  way  and  fol- 
low the  lane  straight  on  " —  but  this  was  a 
figure  of  speech,  for  no  one  could  go  straight 
on  who  followed  that  lane  —  "  till  you  come 
to  the  three  gates.  Be  sure  to  take  the  left- 
hand  one  of  the  three.  Then  you  are  all 
right.  That  gate  opens  into  the  lane  that 
goes  past  the  upper  barn." 

Near  the  upper  barn  were  three  sugar- 
maples  —  the  only  ones  on  the  place  that 
yielded  sap;  and  in  one  of  the  neighboring 
fields  there  was  a  very  great  walnut-tree, 
second  in  size  only  to  the  old  chestnut-tree  in 
the  burying-ground  which  was  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years  old  and  bigger  round  the  body 
than  three  children  clasping  hands  could 
span. 

Those  up-lying  fields  were  rather  far  away 
for  daily  rambles.  Jack  knew  them  less  and 
so  cared  less  for  them  than  for  the  home  acres, 


138     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

which  were  as  familiar  to  him  as  the  rooms  of 
grandfather's  house. 

But  when  grandfather's  children  were  chil- 
dren, the  spring  lambs  wintered  at  the  upper 
barn ;  and  beauteous  creatures  they  were  by 
the  following  spring,  with  broad  foreheads 
and  curly  forelocks  and  clear  hazel  eyes  and 
small  mouths  just  made  for  nibbling  from  the 
hand.  Often,  of  a  keen  April  morning,  when 
the  thawed  places  in  the  lane  were  covered 
with  clinking  ice,  the  children  used  to  trudge 
at  their  father's  side  to  see  the  lambs  get  their 
breakfast  of  turnips,  chopped  in  the  dark  cold 
hay-scented  barn,  while  the  hungry  creatures 
bleated  outside  and  crowded  against  the  door. 

Half  the  poetry  of  the  farm  life  went  into 
the  care  of  the  sheep  and  the  anxieties  con- 
nected with  them.  They  were  a  flock  of  Cots- 
wolds,  carefully  bred  from  imported  stock. 
Their  heavy  fleeces  made  them  the  most  help- 
less of  creatures  when  driven  hard  or  worried 
by  the  dogs,  and  every  neighbor's  dog  was  a 
possible  enemy. 

On  moonlight  nights  in  spring,  when  watch- 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    139 

dogs  are  restless,  and  vagabond  dogs  are  keen 
for  mischief,  the  spirit  of  the  chase  would  get 
abroad.  The  bad  characters  would  lead  on 
the  dogs  of  uncertain  principles,  and  now  and 
then  one  of  unspotted  reputation,  and  the  evil 
work  would  begin.  When  the  household  was 
asleep,  a  knock  would  be  heard  upon  the  win- 
dow, and  the  voice  of  one  hoarse  with  running 
would  give  the  alarm  :  — 

"  The  dogs  are  after  the  sheep  !  " 
The  big  brother  would  get  down  his  shot- 
gun, and  the  father  would  hunt  for  the  oint- 
ments, the  lantern,  and  the  shears  (for  cutting 
the  wool  away  from  bleeding  wounds),  and  to- 
gether they  hurried  away  —  the  avenger  and 
the  healer.  Next  day,  more  than  one  of  the 
neighbors'  children  came  weeping,  to  identify 
a  missing  favorite.  Sometimes  the  innocent 
suffered  for  being  found  in  company  with  the 
guilty.  There  were  hard  feelings  on  both 
sides.  Even  the  owners  of  dogs  caught  with 
the  marks  of  guilt  upon  them  disputed  the 
justice  of  a  life  for  a  life. 

There  is  one  more  gate,  and  then  we  come 


140     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM 

to  the  last  one  —  the  gate  of  the  burying- 
ground. 

A  path  went  over  the  hill  which  divided 
grandfather's  house  from  that  of  his  elder 
brother,  whose  descendants  continued  to  live 
there  after  him.  Uncle  Edward's  children 
were  somewhat  older,  and  his  grandchildren 
were  younger  than  grandfather's  children ; 
but  though  slightly  mismatched  as  to  ages 
the  two  households  were  in  great  accord. 
The  path  crossed  the  "  line  fence  "  by  a  little 
gate  in  the  stone  wall,  and  this  was  the  gate 
of  family  visiting. 

That  way  the  mothers  went  of  an  afternoon 
with  their  sewing,  or  the  last  new  magazine, 
or  the  last  new  baby ;  or  in  the  morning  to 
borrow  a  cupful  of  yeast,  or  to  return  the  last 
loan  of  a  bowlful  of  rice,  or  to  gather  ground- 
ivy  (it  grew  in  Uncle  Edward's  yard,  but  not 
in  grandfather's)  to  make  syrup  for  an  old 
cough.  That  way  came  the  groups,  of  a 
winter  evening,  in  shawls  and  hoods,  creaking 
over  the  snow  with  lantern-light  and  laughter 
to  a  reading  circle,  or  to  one  of  those  family 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    141 

reunions  which  took  place  whenever  some 
relative  from  a  distance  was  visiting  in  the 
neighborhood.  Along  that  path  went  those 
dear  women  in  haste,  to  offer  their  help  in 
sudden,  sharp  emergencies;  and  with  slower 
steps  again  when  all  was  over,  they  went  to 
sit  with  those  in  grief,  or  to  consult  about  the 
last  services  for  the  dead. 

That  was  the  way  the  young  people  took  on 
their  walks  in  summer  —  the  stalwart  country 
boys  and  their  pretty  city  cousins  in  fresh 
muslins,  with  light,  high  voices,  pitched  to  the 
roar  of  the  street.  That  way  went  the  nutting 
parties  in  the  fall  and  the  skating  parties  in 
winter.  All  the  boys  and  girls  of  both  houses 
grew  up  opening  and  shutting  that  gate  on 
one  errand  or  another,  from  the  little  white- 
headed  lad  with  the  mail,  to  the  soldier  cousin 
coming  across  to  say  good-by. 

Between  the  two  neighboring  homes  was 
the  family  burying-ground :  all  this  pleasant 
intercourse  went  on  with  the  silent  cogni- 
zance and  sympathy,  as  it  were,  of  the  fore- 
fathers who  trod  the  path  no  more.  The 


142     THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHERS  FARM 

burying-ground  was  by  far  the  best  spot  for 
a  resting-place  on  either  of  the  farms,  —  in 
a  hollow  of  the  hills,  with  a  stone  fence  all 
round,  draped  as  if  to  deaden  sounds  with 
heavy  festoons  of  woodbine.  Above  the  gray 
granite  and  white  marble  tombstones,  rose 
the  locust-trees,  tall  and  still.  The  beds  of 
myrtle,  underneath,  were  matted  into  a  con- 
tinuous carpet  of  thick,  shining  leaves  which 
caught  the  sunlight  at  broad  noon  with  a 
peculiar  pale  glister  like  moonlight.  The 
chestnut-tree  stood  a  little  apart,  with  one 
great  arm  outstretched  as  if  calling  attention, 
or  asking  for  silence.  Yet  no  child  ever 
hushed  its  laughter  as  it  passed  the  little  gate 
with  the  gray  pickets,  overhung  by  a  climbing 
rose,  which  opened  into  the  burying-ground ; 
and  when,  in  the  autumn,  the  old  chestnut-tree 
dropped  its  nuts,  the  children  never  hesitated 
to  go  in  that  way  and  gather  them  because  of 
the  solemn  neighborhood.  They  had  grown 
up  in  the  presence  of  these  memorials  of  the 
beloved  dead.  But  no  one  ever  opened  that 
gate  without  at  least  a  momentary  thoughtful- 


THE  GATES  ON  GRANDFATHER'S  FARM    143 

ness.  No  one  ever  slammed  it,  in  anger  or  in 
haste.  And  so  it  became  a  dumb  teacher  of 
reverence  —  a  daily  reminder  to  be  quiet,  to 
be  gentle,  for  the  sake  of  those  at  rest  on  the 
other  side  of  the  wall. 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

THE  rooms  at  grandfather's  house  had  been 
used  so  long,  they  were  almost  human  them- 
selves. Each  room  had  a  look  of  its  own, 
when  you  opened  the  door,  as  expressive  as  a 
speaking  countenance. 

"  Come  in,  children  dear !  "  the  sunny  sit- 
ting-room always  seemed  to  say. 

"Sit  still  and  don't  talk  too  much,  and 
don't  handle  the  things  on  the  tables,"  said 
the  large,  gleaming,  dim-lighted  parlors. 

"  Dear  me,  what  weather  this  is ! "  grumbled 
the  poky  back  entry  where  the  overshoes  and 
waterproofs  and  wood-boxes  were  kept. 

"  There  's  a  piece  —  of  cake  —  in  the  cup- 
board for  you,"  quietly  ticked  the  dining- 
room  clock,  its  large  face  looking  at  no  one  in 
particular. 

But  of  all  the  rooms  in  that  house,  upstairs 
or  down,  not  one  had  the  strangeness,  the 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     145 

mysterious  nod  and  beck  and  whisper,  of  the 
murky  old  garret. 

"  Hark,  what  was  that  ?  "  it  would  seem  to 
creak ;  and  then  there  was  silence.  "  Hush  ! 
I  '11  tell  you  a  story,"  it  sometimes  answered. 

Some  of  its  stories  were  true,  but  I  should 
not  like  to  vouch  for  all  of  them. 

What  a  number  of  queer  things  it  kept 
hidden  away  under  the  eaves  that  spread  wide, 
a  broad- winged  cloak  of  shadows  !  What  a 
strange  eye  it  had,  its  one  half-moon  window 
peering  at  you  from  the  high,  peaked  forehead 
of  the  gable. 

The  garret  door  was  at  the  far  end  of  the 
long  upper  hall ;  from  it  the  stairs  (and  how 
they  did  creak !)  led  up  directly  out  of  the 
cheerful  daylight  into  that  uncarpeted  wilder- 
ness where  it  was  always  twilight. 

It  was  the  younger  children's  business  to 
trot  on  errands,  and  they  were  not  consulted 
as  to  where  or  when  they  should  go.  Grown 
people  seem  to  forget  how  early  it  gets  dark 
up  garret  in  winter,  and  how  far  away  the 
house  noises  sound  with  all  the  doors  shut 
between. 


146     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

When  the  children  were  sent  up  garret  for 
nuts,  —  for  Sunday  dessert  with  mince  pie  and 
apples,  or  to  pass  around  with  cider  in  the 
evening,  —  they  were  careful  to  leave  the  stair 
door  open  behind  them ;  but  there  was  little 
comfort  in  that,  for  all  the  people  were  two 
flights  down  and  busy  with  their  own  con- 
cerns. 

Downstairs  in  the  bright  western  chambers 
nobody  thought  of  its  being  late,  but  up 
garret,  under  the  eaves,  it  was  already  night. 
Thick  ice  incrusted  the  half-moon  window, 
curtaining  its  cold  ray  that  sadly  touched  an 
object  here  and  there,  and  deepened  the 
neighboring  gloom. 

The  autumn  nut  harvest  was  spread  first 
upon  sheets  on  the  garret  floor  to  dry,  and 
then  it  was  garnered  in  the  big,  green  bath- 
tub which  had  stood,  since  the  children  could 
remember,  over  against  the  chimney,  to  the 
right  of  the  gable  window.  This  tub  was  for 
size  and  weight  the  father  of  all  bathtubs. 
It  was  used  for  almost  anything  but  the  pur- 
pose for  which  it  was  intended. 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     147 

In  summer,  when  it  was  empty,  the  children 
played  "shipwreck"  in  it;  it  was  their  life- 
boat, and  they  were  cast  away  on  the  high 
seas.  Some  rowed  for  dear  life,  with  umbrellas 
and  walking-sticks,  and  some  made  believe  to 
cry  and  call  for  help,  —  for  that  was  their  idea 
of  the  behavior  of  a  shipwrecked  company ; 
and  some  tramped  on  the  bulging  tin  bottom 
of  the  tub,  which  yielded  and  sprang  back 
with  a  loud  thump,  like  the  clank  of  oars.  It 
was  very  exciting. 

In  winter  it  was  the  granary.  It  held  bush- 
els and  bushels  of  nuts,  and  its  smooth,  out- 
sloping  sides  defeated  the  clever  little  mice 
who  were  always  raiding  and  rummaging 
among  the  garret  stores. 

Well,  it  seemed  a  long  distance  to  the  timid 
little  errand  girl,  from  the  stairs,  across  the 
garret  floor  to  that  bathtub.  "Noiseless  as 
fear  in  a  wide  wilderness,"  she  stepped.  Then, 
what  a  shock  it  was,  when  the  first  loud  hand- 
fuls  of  nuts  bumped  upon  the  bottom  of  the 
pail!  The  nuts  were  pointed  and  cold  as 
lumps  of  ice ;  they  hurt  the  small  hands  that 


148     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS 

shoveled  them  up  in  haste,  and  a  great  many 
handfuls  it  took  to  fill  the  pail. 

Hanging  from  the  beams  that  divided  the 
main  garret  from  the  eaves,  dangled  a  per- 
fectly useless  row  of  old  garments  that  seemed 
to  be  there  for  no  purpose  but  to  look  dread- 
ful. How  they  might  have  appeared  in  a 
different  light  cannot  be  said;  there  seemed 
to  be  nothing  wrong  with  them  when  the  wo- 
men took  them  down  at  house-cleaning  time 
and  shook  and  beat  them  about;  they  were  as 
empty  as  sacks,  every  one.  But  in  that  dim, 
furtive  light,  seen  by  over-shoulder  glimpses 
they  had  the  semblance  of  dismal  malefac- 
tors suffering  the  penalty  of  their  crimes. 
Some  were  hooded  and  seemed  to  hang  their 
heads  upon  their  sunken  breasts ;  all  were 
high-shouldered  wretches  with  dangling  arms 
and  a  shapeless,  dreary  suggestiveness  worse 
than  human.  The  most  objectionable  one  of 
the  lot  was  a  long,  dark  weather-cloak,  worn 
"  about  the  twenties,"  as  old  people  say.  It 
was  of  the  fashion  of  that  "  long  red  cloak, 
well  brushed  and  neat,"  which  we  read  of  in 
John  Gilpin's  famous  ride. 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     149 

But  the  great-grandfather's  cloak  was  of  a 
dark  green  color,  and  not  well  brushed.  It 
had  a  high,  majestic  velvet  collar,  hooked  with 
a  heavy  steel  clasp  and  chain  ;  but  for  all  its 
respectable  and  kindly  associations,  it  looked, 
hanging  from  the  garret  rafters,  just  as  much 
a  gallows-bird  as  any  of  its  ruffian  company. 

The  children  could  not  forgive  their  great- 
grandfather for  having  had  such  a  sinister- 
looking  garment,  or  for  leaving  it  behind  him 
to  hang  in  the  grim  old  garret  and  frighten 
them.  Solemn  as  the  garret  looked,  no  doubt 
this  was  one  of  its  jokes  :  to  dress  itself  up  in 
shadows  and  pretend  things  to  tease  the  chil- 
dren, as  we  have  known  some  real  persons  to 
do.  It  certainly  was  not  fair,  when  they  were 
up  there  all  alone. 

The  scuttle  in  the  roof  was  shut,  in  winter, 
to  keep  out  the  snow.  A  long  ladder  led  up 
to  it  from  the  middle  garret,  and  close  to  this 
ladder  stood  another  uncanny-looking  object 
—  the  bath-closet. 

The  family  had  always  been  inveterate  bath- 
ers, but  surely  this  shower  bath  must  have 


150     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

capped  the  climax  of  its  cold-water  experi- 
ments. 

It  was  contrived  so  that  a  pail  of  water,  car- 
ried up  by  the  scuttle  ladder  and  emptied  into 
a  tilting  vessel  on  top  of  the  closet,  could  be 
made  to  descend  on  a  sudden  in  a  deluge  of 
large  drops  upon  the  head  of  the  person  in- 
side. There  was  no  escape  for  that  person ; 
the  closet  gave  him  but  just  room  to  stand 
up  under  the  infliction,  and  once  the  pail  was 
tilted,  the  water  was  bound  to  come. 

The  children  thought  of  this  machine  with 
shivering  and  dread.  They  had  heard  it  said 
—  perhaps  in  the  kitchen  —  that  their  little 
grandmother  had  "  nearly  killed  herself "  in 
that  shower  bath,  till  the  doctor  forbade  her 
to  use  it  any  more. 

Its  walls  were  screens  of  white  cotton  cloth, 
showing  a  mysterious  opaque  glimmer  against 
the  light,  also  the  shadowy  outlines  of  some 
objects  within  which  the  children  could  not 
account  for.  The  narrow  screen  door  was  al- 
ways shut,  and  no  child  ever  dreamed  of  open- 
ing it  or  of  meddling  with  the  secrets  of  that 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     151 

pale  closet.  It  was  enough  to  have  to  pass 
it  on  lonesome  errands,  looming  like  a  "  sheeted 
ghost "  in  the  garret's  perpetual  twilight. 

The  garret,  like  some  of  the  great  foreign 
churches,  had  a  climate  of  its  own ;  still  and 
dry,  but  subject  to  extremes  of  heat  and  cold. 
In  summer  it  was  the  tropics,  in  winter  the 
frozen  pole. 

But  it  had  its  milder  moods  also,  —  when 
it  was  neither  hot  nor  cold,  nor  light  nor 
dark ;  when  it  beamed  in  mellow  half-tones 
upon  its  youthful  visitors,  left  off  its  ugly 
frightening  tricks,  told  them  "once  upon  a 
time "  stories,  and  even  showed  them  all  its 
old  family  keepsakes. 

These  pleasant  times  occurred  about  twice 
every  year,  at  the  spring  and  fall  house-clean- 
ing, when  the  women  with  brooms  and  dust- 
pans invaded  the  garret  and  made  a  cheerful 
bustle  in  that  deserted  place. 

The  scuttle  hole  in  the  roof  was  then  open, 
to  give  light  to  the  cleaners,  and  a  far,  bright 
square  of  light  shone  down.  It  was  as  if  the 
garret  smiled. 


152     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

All  the  queer  old  things,  stowed  away  un- 
der the  eaves,  behind  boxes  and  broken  furni- 
ture and  stoves  and  rolls  of  carpets,  were 
dragged  forth  ;  and  they  were  as  good  as  new 
discoveries  to  the  children  who  had  not  seen 
them  nor  heard  their  stories  since  last  house- 
cleaning  time. 

There  was  the  brass  warming-pan,  with  its 
shining  lid  full  of  holes  like  a  pepper-box. 
On  this  warming-pan,  as  a  sort  of  sled,  the 
children  used  to  ride  by  turns  —  one  child 
seated  on,  or  in,  the  pan,  two  others  dragging 
it  over  the  floor  by  the  long,  dark  wood 
handle. 

And  there  were  the  pattens  "  which  step- 
great-grandmother  Sheppard  brought  over 
from  England ;  "  one  pair  with  leather  straps 
and  one  with  straps  of  cotton  velvet,  edged 
with  a  tarnished  gilt  embroidery.  The  straps 
were  meant  to  lace  over  a  full-grown  woman's 
instep,  but  the  children  managed  somehow  to 
keep  them  on  their  feet,  and  they  clattered 
about,  on  steel-shod  soles,  with  a  racket  equal 
to  the  midnight  clatter  of  Santa  Glaus' s  team 
of  reindeer. 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS     153 

There  was  a  huge  muff  of  dark  fur,  kept  in 
a  tall  blue  paper  bandbox ;  the  children  could 
bury  their  arms  in  it  up  to  the  shoulder.  It 
had  been  carried  by  some  lady  in  the  time  of 
short  waists  and  scant  skirts  and  high  coat 
collars ;  when  girls  covered  their  bare  arms 
with  long  kid  gloves  and  tucked  their  little 
slippered  toes  into  fur-lined  foot-muffs  and 
went  on  moonlight  sleighing  parties,  dressed 
as  girls  dress  nowadays  for  a  dance. 

One  of  these  very  same  foot-muffs  (the  moths 
had  once  got  into  it)  led  a  sort  of  at-arm's- 
length  existence  in  the  garret,  neither  quite 
condemned  nor  yet  allowed  to  mingle  with  un- 
impeachable articles  of  clothing.  And  there 
was  a  "foot-stove  "  used  in  old  times  on  long 
drives  in  winter  or  in  the  cold  country  meet- 
ing-houses. They  were  indefatigable  visitors 
and  meeting-goers,  —  those  old-time  Friends. 
Weather  and  distance  were  nothing  thought 
of;  and  in  the  most  troublous  times  they 
could  go  to  and  fro  in  their  peaceful  charac- 
ter, unmolested  and  unsuspected,  though  no 
doubt  they  had  their  sympathies  as  strong  as 
other  people's. 


154     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

A  china  bowl  is  still  shown,  in  one  branch 
of  grandfather's  family,  which  one  of  the 
great-aunts,  then  a  young  woman,  carried  on 
her  saddle-bow  through  both  the  British  and 
Continental  lines,  from  her  old  home  on  Long 
Island  to  her  husband's  house  on  the  west 
bank  of  the  Hudson  above  West  Point. 

No  traveling  member  of  the  society  ever 
thought  of  "  putting-up  "  for  the  night  any- 
where but  at  a  Friend's  house.  Journeys 
were  planned  in  stages  from  such  a  Friend's 
house  to  such  another  one's,  or  from  meeting 
to  meeting.  In  days  when  letter  postage  was 
dear  and  newspapers  were  almost  unknown, 
such  visits  were  keenly  welcome,  and  were  a 
chief  means  by  which  isolated  country  families 
kept  up  their  communication  with  the  world. 

There  were  many  old-fashioned  household 
utensils  in  the  garret,  the  use  of  which  had  to 
be  explained  to  the  children  ;  and  all  this  was 
as  good  as  history,  and  more  easily  remem- 
bered than  much  that  is  written  in  books. 

There  was  the  old  "  Dutch  oven  "  that  had 
stood  in  front  of  roaring  hearth-fires  in  days 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS     155 

when  Christmas  dinners  were  cooked  without 
the  aid  of  stoves  or  ranges.  And  there  were 
the  iron  firedogs,  the  pot-hooks  and  the  crane 
which  were  part  of  the  fireplace  furniture. 
And  the  big  wool-wheel  for  the  spinning  of 
yarn,  the  smaller  and  lady-like  flax-wheel,  and 
the  tin  candle  moulds  for  the  making  of  tallow 
candles ;  and  a  pleasure  it  must  have  heen  to 
see  the  candles  "  drawn/'  when  the  pure  white 
tallow  had  set  in  the  slender  tubes  and  taken 
the  shape  of  them  perfectly,  —  each  candle, 
when  drawn  out  by  the  wick,  as  cold  and  hard 
and  smooth  as  alabaster.  And  there  was  the 
"baby-jumper  "  and  the  wicker  "  runaround," 
to  show  that  babies  had  always  been  babies — 
just  the  same  restless  little  pets  then  as  now 
—  and  that  mother's  and  nurse's  arms  were 
as  apt  to  get  tired. 

The  garret  had  kept  a  faithful  family  re- 
cord, and  hence  it  told  of  sickness  and  suffer- 
ing as  well  as  of  pleasure  and  business  and 
life  and  feasting. 

A  little  old  crutch,  padded  by  some  wo- 
man's hand  with  an  attempt  to  make  it  hand- 


156     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

some  as  well  as  comfortable,  stood  against 
the  chimney  on  the  dark  side  next  the  eaves. 
It  was  short  enough  for  a  child  of  twelve  to 
lean  upon.  It  had  seen  considerable  use,  for 
the  brown  velvet  pad  was  worn  quite  thin 
and  gray.  Had  the  little  cripple  ever  walked 
again?  With  what  feelings  did  the  mother 
put  that  crutch  away  up-garret  when  it  was 
needed  no  more  ?  The  garret  did  not  say  how 
that  story  of  pain  had  ended ;  or  whether  it  was 
long  or  short.  The  children  never  sought  to 
know.  It  was  one  of  the  questions  which  they 
did  not  ask  :  they  knew  very  little  about  pain 
themselves,  and  perhaps  they  did  not  fully 
enter  into  the  meaning  of  that  sad  little  relic. 
Still  less  did  they  understand  the  reverence 
with  which  the  house-cleaning  women  handled 
a  certain  bare  wooden  frame,  neither  hand- 
some nor  comfortable  looking.  It  had  been 
made  to  support  an  invalid  in  a  sitting  pos- 
ture in  bed ;  and  the  invalid  for  whom  it  was 
provided,  in  her  last  days,  had  suffered  much 
from  difficulty  of  breathing,  and  had  passed 
many  weary  hours,  sometimes  whole  nights, 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS     157 

supported  by  this  frame.  It  had  for  those 
who  knew  its  use  the  sacredness  of  association 
with  that  long  ordeal  of  pain,  endured  with 
perfect  patience  and  watched  over  with  con- 
stant love. 

But  these  were  memories  which  the  little 
children  could  not  share.  When  their  prat- 
tling questions  touched  upon  the  sore  places, 
the  wounds  in  the  family  past,  they  were  not 
answered,  or  were  put  aside  till  some  more 
fitting  occasion,  or  until  they  were  old  enough 
to  listen  with  their  hearts. 

Under  the  eaves  there  was  an  old  green 
chest  whose  contents,  year  after  year,  the 
children  searched  through  in  the  never-fail- 
ing hope  that  they  should  find  something 
which  had  not  been  there  the  year  before. 
There  were  old  account-books  with  their 
stories  of  loss  and  gain  which  the  children 
could  not  read.  There  were  bundles  of  old 
letters  which  they  were  not  allowed  to  exam- 
ine. There  were  "  ink-portraits,"  family  pro- 
files in  silhouette,  which  they  thought  very 
funny,  especially  in  the  matter  of  coat  collars 


158     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

and  "back  hair."  There  were  schoolgirl 
prizes  of  fifty  years  ago ;  the  schoolgirls  had 
grown  into  grandmammas,  and  some  were 
dead.  There  was  old-fashioned  art-work, 
paintings  on  velvet  or  satin  ;  boxes  covered 
with  shells ;  needlebooks  and  samplers  show- 
ing the  most  exemplary  stitches  in  colors 
faded  by  time.  There  were  handsomely  bound 
volumes  of  "  Extracts,"  containing  poems  and 
long  passages  of  elegant  prose  copied  in  pale- 
brown  ink,  in  the  proper  penmanship  of  the 
time.  And  there  was  a  roll  of  steel-plate  en- 
gravings which  had  missed  the  honor  of 
frames;  and  of  these  the  children's  favorite 
picture  was  one  called  The  Wife. 

It  is  some  time  since  I  have  seen  that 
picture  ;  I  may  be  wrong  about  some  of  the 
details.  But  as  I  remember  her,  the  wife  was 
a  long-necked  lady  with  very  large  eyes, 
dressed  in  white,  with  large  full  sleeves  and 
curls  falling  against  her  cheek.  She  held  a 
feather  hand-screen,  and  she  was  doing  no- 
thing but  look  beautiful  and  sweetly  attentive 
to  her  husband,  who  was  seated  on  the  other 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS     159 

side  of  the  table  and  was  reading  aloud  to 
her  by  the  light  of  an  old-fashioned  astral 
lamp. 

This,  of  course,  was  the  ideal  wife,  so 
thought  the  little  girls.  Every  other  form  of 
wifehood  known  to  them  was  more  or  less 
made  up  of  sewing  and  housework  and  every- 
day clothes.  Even  in  the  family  past,  it  had 
the  taint  of  the  Dutch  oven  and  the  spin- 
ning-wheel and  the  candle  moulds  upon  it. 
They  looked  at  their  finger-tips ;  no,  it  was 
not  likely  theirs  would  ever  grow  to  be  long 
and  pointed  like  hers.  The  wife  no  one  of 
them  should  ever  be  —  only  a  wife  perhaps, 
with  the  usual  sewing-work,  and  not  enough 
white  dresses  to  afford  to  wear  one  every 
evening. 

It  took  one  day  to  clean  the  garret  and 
another  to  put  things  away.  Winter  clothing 
had  to  be  brushed  and  packed  in  the  chests 
where  it  was  kept ;  the  clothes  closet  had  to 
be  cleaned ;  then  its  door  was  closed  and 
locked.  The  last  of  the  brooms  and  dust- 
pans beat  a  retreat,  the  stair  door  was  shut, 


160     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

and  the  dust  and  the  mystery  began  to 
gather  as  before. 

But  summer,  though  no  foe  to  dust,  was 
a  great  scatterer  of  the  garret  mysteries. 
Gay,  lightsome  summer  peeped  in  at  the  half- 
moon  window  and  smiled  down  from  the 
scuttle  in  the  roof.  Warm  weather  had  come, 
the  sash  that  fitted  the  gable  window  was 
taken  out  permanently.  Outdoor  sounds  and 
perfumes  floated  up.  Athwart  the  sleeping 
sunbeams  golden  dust  motes  quivered,  and 
bees  from  the  garden  sailed  in  and  out  on 
murmuring  wing. 

If  a  thunderstorm  came  up  suddenly,  then 
there  was  a  fine  race  up  two  flights  of  stairs ! 

—  and  whoever  reached  the  scuttle  ladder  first 
had  the  first  right  to  climb  it,  and  to  pull  in 
the   shutter  that   covered   the    scuttle   hole. 
There  was  time,  perhaps,  for  one  breathless 
look  down  the  long  slope  of  bleached  shingles, 

—  at  the  tossing  treetops,  the  meadow  grass 
whipped  white,  the   fountain's  jet  of  water 
bending  like  a  flame  and  falling  silent  on  the 
grass,  the  neighbor's  team  hurrying  homeward, 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     161 

and  the  dust  rising  along  the  steep  upward 
grade  of  the  village  road. 

Then  fell  the  first  great  drop  —  another, 
and  another ;  the  shutter  hid  the  storm- 
bright  square  of  sky,  and  down  came  the 
rain  —  trampling  on  the  shingles,  drumming 
in  the  gutters,  drowning  the  laughing  voices 
below ;  and  suddenly  the  garret  grew  cool, 
and  its  mellow  glow  darkened  to  brown  twi- 
light. 

Under  the  gable  window  there  stood  for 
many  years  a  white  pine  box,  with  a  front 
that  let  down  on  leather  hinges.  It  was  very 
clean  inside  and  faintly  odorous.  The  chil- 
dren called  it  the  bee-box,  and  they  had  a 
story  of  their  own  to  account  for  the  tradi- 
tion that  this  box  had  once  held  rich  store  of 
honey  in  the  comb. 

A  queen  bee,  they  said,  soaring  above  the 
tops  of  the  cherry-trees  in  swarming-time, 
had  drifted  in  at  the  garret  window  with  all 
the  swarm  in  tow;  and  where  her  royal 
caprice  had  led  them,  the  faithful  workers 
remained  and  formed  a  colony  in  the  bee-box, 


162     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

and,  like  honest  tenants,  left  a  quantity  of 
their  sweet  wares  behind  to  pay  for  their 
winter's  lodging. 

There  may  have  been  some  truth  in  this 
story,  but  the  honey  was  long  since  gone, 
and  so  were  the  bees.  The  bee-box,  in  the 
children's  time,  held  only  files  of  old  maga- 
zines packed  away  for  binding.  Of  course 
they  never  were  bound;  and  the  children 
who  used  to  look  at  the  pictures  in  them, 
grew  into  absent-minded  girls  with  half- 
lengths  of  hair  falling  into  their  eyes  when 
they  stooped  too  low  over  their  books,  —  as 
they  always  would,  to  read.  The  bee-box  was 
crammed  till  the  lid  would  no  longer  shut. 
And  now  the  dusty  pages  began  to  gleam 
and  glow,  and  voices  that  all  the  world  lis- 
tened to  spoke  to  those  young  hearts  for  the 
first  time  in  the  garret's  stillness. 

The  rapt  young  reader,  seated  on  the 
garret  floor,  never  thought  of  looking  for  a 
date,  nor  asked,  "  Who  tells  this  story  ? " 
Those  voices  were  as  impersonal  as  the  winds 
and  the  stars  of  the  summer  night. 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS     163 

It  might  have  been  twenty  years,  it  might 
have  been  but  a  year  before,  that  Lieutenant 
Strain  led  his  brave  little  band  into  the  deadly 
tropic  wilderness  of  Darien.  It  is  doubtful  if 
those  child-readers  knew  why  he  was  sent,  by 
whom,  or  what  to  do.  The  beginning  of  the 
narrative  was  in  a  "  missing  number  "  of  the 
magazine.  It  mattered  not ;  they  read  from 
the  heart,  not  from  the  head.  It  was  the 
toils,  the  resolves,  the  sufferings  of  the  men 
that  they  cared  about,  —  their  characters  and 
conduct  under  trial.  They  agonized  with 
"Truxton"  over  his  divided  duty,  and  they 
wept  at  his  all  but  dying  words  :  — 

"  Did  I  do  right,  Strain?" 

They  worshiped,  with  unquestioning  faith, 
at  the  shrine  of  that  factitious  god  of  battles, 
Abbot's  "Napoleon."  With  beating  hearts 
and  burning  cheeks  they  lived  in  the  tragic 
realism  of  "  Witching  Times."  "  Maya,  the 
Princess,"  and  "  The  Amber  Gods,"  « In  a 
Cellar,"  "  The  South  Breaker,"  stormed  their 
fresh  imaginations,  and  left  them  feverishly 
dreaming ;  and  there  in  the  garret's  tropic 


164     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER^ 

warmth  and  stillness  they  first  heard  the 
voice  of  the  great  master  who  gave  us  Colonel 
Newcome,  and  who  wrought  us  to  such  pas- 
sionate sympathy  with  the  fortunes  of  Clive 
and  Ethel.  And  here,  too,  the  last  number 
was  missing,  and  for  a  long  time  the  young 
readers  went  sorrowing  for  Olive,  and  think- 
ing that  he  and  Ethel  had  been  parted  all 
their  lives. 

These  garret  readings  were  frequently  a 
stolen  joy,  but  perhaps  "  mother  "  was  in  the 
secret  of  the  bee-box,  and  did  not  search  very 
closely  or  call  very  loud  when  a  girl  was 
missing,  about  the  middle  of  the  warm,  mid- 
summer afternoons. 

About  midsummer  the  sage  was  picked 
and  spread  upon  newspapers  upon  the  garret 
floor  to  dry.  That  was  a  pleasant  task. 
Children  are  sensitive  to  the  touch  of  beauty 
connected  with  their  labors.  Their  eyes  lin- 
gered with  delight  upon  the  color,  the  crepe- 
like  texture  of  the  fragrant  sage,  bestrew- 
ing the  brown  garret  floor  with  its  delicate 
life  already  wilting  in  the  dry,  warm  air. 


THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     165 

"  September  winds  should  never  blow  upon 
hops,"  the  saying  is ;  therefore  the  hops  for 
a  whole  year's  yeast-making  were  gathered 
in  the  wane  of  summer ;  and  here,  too,  was 
a  task  that  brought  its '  own  reward.  The 
hops  made  a  carpet  for  the  garret  floor,  more 
beautiful  even  than  the  blue-green  sage ;  and 
as  the  harvest  was  much  larger,  so  the  fair 
living  carpet  spread  much  wider.  It  was  a 
sight  to  see,  in  the  low  light  of  the  half-moon 
window,  all  the  fragile  pale  green  balls, 
powdered  to  the  heart's  core  with  gold-col- 
ored pollen  —  a  field  of  beauty  spread  there 
for  no  eye  to  see.  Yet  it  was  not  wasted. 
The  children  did  not  speak  of  what  they  felt, 
but  nothing  that  was  beautiful,  or  mysterious, 
or  stimulating  to  the  fancy  in  those  garret 
days,  was  ever  lost.  It  is  often  the  slight  im- 
pressions that,  like  the  "  scent  of  the  roses," 
wear  best  and  most  keenly  express  the  past. 

No  child  ever  forgot  the  physiognomy  of 
those  rooms  at  grandfather's :  the  mid-after- 
noon stillness  when  the  sun  shone  on  the 
lemon  -  tree,  and  its  flowers  shed  their  per- 


166     THE  GARRET  AT  GRANDFATHERS 

fume  on  the  warm  air  of  the  sitting-room ;  the 
peculiar  odor  of  the  withering  garden  when 
October  days  were  growing  chill ;  the  soft 
rustle  of  the  wind  searching  among  the  dead 
leaves  of  the  arbor ;  the  cider-milPs  drone  in 
the  hazy  distance ;  the  creaking  of  the  loaded 
wagons;  the  bang  of  the  great  barn  doors 
when  the  wind  swung  them  to. 

No  child  of  all  those  who  have  played  in 
grandfather's  garret  ever  forgot  its  stories,  its 
solemn,  silent  make-believes,  the  dreams  they 
dreamed  there  when  they  were  girls,  or  the 
books  they  read. 


THE  SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRAND- 
FATHER'S 

IT  was  the  hour  for  fireside  talks  in  the 
canon :  too  early,  as  dusk  falls  on  a  short  De- 
cember day,  for  lamps  to  be  lighted ;  too  late 
to  snatch  a  page  or  two  more  of  the  last 
magazine,  by  the  low  gleam  that  peered  in  the 
western  windows. 

Jack  had  done  his  part  in  the  evening's 
wood-carrying,  and  now  was  enjoying  the 
fruits  of  honest  toil,  watching  the  gay  red 
flames  that  becked  and  bowed  up  the  lava-rock 
chimney.  The  low-ceiled  room,  with  its  rows 
of  books,  its  guns  and  pipes  and  idols  in  Zuni 
pottery,  darkled  in  corners  and  glowed  in 
spots,  and  the  faces  round  the  hearth  were 
lighted  as  by  footlights,  in  their  various  atti- 
tudes of  thoughtfulness. 

" Now,  what  is  that?"  cried  Jack's  mamma, 
putting  down  the  fan  screen  she  held,  and 
turning  her  head  to  listen. 


168     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

It  was  only  the  wind  booming  over  the 
housetop,  but  it  had  found  a  new  plaything ; 
it  was  strumming  with  a  free  hand  and  mighty 
on  the  long,  taut  wires  that  guyed  the  wash- 
shed  stovepipe.  The  wash-shed  was  a  post- 
script in  boards  and  shingles  hastily  added  to 
the  main  dwelling  after  the  latter 's  comple- 
tion. It  had  no  chimney,  only  four  feet  of 
pipe  projecting  from  the  roof,  an  item  which 
would  have  added  to  the  insurance  had  there 
been  any  insurance.  The  risk  of  fire  was  taken 
along  with  the  other  risks,  but  the  family 
was  vigilant. 

Mrs.  Gilmour  listened  till  she  sighed  again. 
The  wind,  she  said,  reminded  her  of  a  sound 
she  had  not  thought  of  for  years,  —  the  whir- 
ring of  swallows'  wings  in  the  spare  bedroom 
chimney  at  home. 

"  Swallows  in  the  chimney  ?  "  cried  Jack, 
suddenly  attentive.  "  How  could  they  build 
fires  then,  without  roasting  the  birds  ?  " 

"  The  chimneys  were  three  stories  high,  and 
the  swallows  built  near  the  top,  I  suppose. 
They  had  the  sky  and  the  stars  for  a  ceiling 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     169 

to  their  dark  little  bedrooms.  In  spring  there 
was  never  more  than  a  blaze  of  sticks  on  the 
hearth  —  not  that,  unless  we  had  visitors  to 
stay.  Sometimes  a  young  swallow  trying  to 
fly  fell  out  of  the  nest  and  fluttered  across  the 
hearth  into  the  room.  That  was  very  exciting 
to  us  children.  But  at  house-cleaning  time  a 
great  bag  of  straw  was  stuffed  up  the  chim- 
ney's throat  to  save  the  hearth  from  falling 
soot  and  dried  mud  and  the  litter  from  the 
nests.  It  was  a  brick  hearth  painted  red,  and 
washed  always  with  milk  to  make  it  shine. 
The  andirons  were  such  as  you  will  see  in  the 
garret  of  any  good  old  house  in  the  East, — 
fluted  brass  columns  with  brass  cones  on  top. 

"It  was  in  summer,  when  the  bird  colony 
was  liveliest,  that  we  used  to  hear  the  beating 
of  wings  in  the  chimney,  —  a  smothered  sound 
like  the  throbbing  of  a  steamer's  wheels  far 
off  in  a  fog,  or  behind  a  neck  of  land." 

Jack  asked  more  questions ;  the  men  seemed 
not  inclined  to  talk,  and  the  mother  fell  to 
remembering  aloud,  speaking  sometimes  to 
Jack,  but  often  to  the  others.  All  the  simple 


170     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHERS 

features  of  her  old  Eastern  home  had  gained 
a  priceless  value,  as  things  of  a  past  gone  out 
of  her  life  which  she  had  scarcely  prized  at 
the  time.  She  was  half  jealous  of  her  chil- 
dren's attachment  to  the  West,  and  longed  to 
make  them  know  the  place  of  the  family's 
nativity,  through  such  pictures  of  it  as  her 
memory  could  supply. 

But  her  words  meant  more  to  herself  than 
to  any  that  listened. 

"  Did  we  ever  sleep  in  that  bedroom  with 
the  chimney-swallows  ?  "  asked  Jack.  He  was 
thinking,  What  a  mistake  to  stop  up  the  chim- 
ney and  cut  off  communication  with  such  jolly 
neighbors  as  the  swallows ! 

Yes,  his  mother  said;  he  had  slept  there, 
but  before  he  could  remember.  It  was  the 
winter  he  was  three  years  old,  when  his  father 
was  in  Deadwood. 

There  used  to  be  such  beautiful  frost- 
pictures  on  the  eastern  window  panes;  and 
when  the  sun  rose  and  the  fire  was  lighted 
and  the  pictures  faded,  a  group  of  little 
bronze -black  cedars  appeared,  half  a  mile 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     171 

away,  topping  the  ridge  by  the  river,  and  be- 
yond them  were  the  solemn  blue  hills.  Those 
hills  and  the  cedars  were  as  much  a  part  of  a 
winter's  sunrise  on  the  Hudson  as  the  sun 
himself. 

Jack  used  to  lie  in  bed  and  listen  for  the 
train,  a  signal  his  mother  did  not  care  to  hear, 
for  it  meant  she  must  get  up  and  set  a  match 
to  the  fire,  laid  overnight  in  the  big-bellied, 
air-tight  stove  that  panted  and  roared  on  its 
four  short  legs,  shuddering  in  a  transport  of 
sudden  heat. 

When  the  air  of  the  room  grew  milder, 
Jack  would  hop  out  in  his  wrapper  and  slip- 
pers, and  run  to  the  north  window  to  see 
what  new  shapes  the  fountain  had  taken  in 
the  night. 

The  jet  of  water  in  winter  was  turned  low, 
and  the  spray  of  it  froze  and  piled  above  the 
urn,  changing  as  the  wind  veered  and  as  the 
sun  wasted  it.  On  some  mornings  it  looked 
like  a  weeping  white  lady  in  a  crystal  veil ; 
sometimes  a  Niobe  group,  children  clinging 
to  a  white,  sad  mother,  who  clasped  them  and 


172     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

bowed  her  head.  When  the  sun  peeped 
through  the  fir-trees,  it  touched  the  fountain 
statuary  with  sea  tints  of  emerald  and  pearl. 

Had  Jack  been  old  enough  to  krrow  the 
story  of  Undine,  he  might  have  fancied  that 
he  saw  her,  on  those  winter  mornings,  and  I 
am  sure  he  would  have  wanted  to  fetch  her  in 
and  warm  her  and  dry  her  icy  tears. 

The  spare-room  mantelpiece  was  high. 
Jack  could  see  only  the  tops  of  things  upon 
it,  even  by  walking  far  back  into  the  room ; 
but  of  a  morning,  mounted  on  the  pillows  of 
the  great  four-poster,  he  could  explore  the 
mantel's  treasures,  which  .never  varied  nor 
changed  places.  There  was  the  whole  length 
and  pattern  of  the  tall  silver-plated  candle- 
sticks and  the  snuffers  in  their  tray ;  the 
Indian  box  of  birch-bark  overlaid  with  porcu- 
pine quills,  which  held  concealed  riches  of 
shells  and  coral  and  dark  sea  beans;  there 
was  the  centre  vase  of  Derbyshire  spar,  two 
dolphins  wreathing  their  tails  to  support  a 
bacchante's  bowl  crowned  with  grape  leaves. 
In  winter  this  vase  held  an  arrangement  of 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     173 

dried  immortelles,  yellow  and  pink  and  crim- 
son, and  some  that  verged  upon  magenta  and 
should  have  been  cast  out  as  an  offense  to  the 
whole;  but  grandmother  had  for  flowers  a 
charity  that  embraced  every  sin  of  color 
they  were  capable  of.  When  her  daughters 
grew  up  and  put  on  airs  of  superior  taste,  they 
protested  against  these  stiff  mementos;  but 
she  was  mildly  inflexible ;  she  continued  to 
gather  and  to  dry  her  "  everlastings/'  with 
faithful  recognition  of  their  prickly  virtues. 
She  was  not  one  to  slight  old  friends  for  a 
trifling  mistake  in  color,  though  Art  should 
put  forth  her  edict  and  call  them  naught. 

In  the  northeast  corner  of  the  room  stood  a 
great  invalid  chair,  dressed,  like  a  woman,  in 
white  dimity  that  came  down  to  the  floor  all 
round.  The  plump  feather  cushion  had  an 
apron,  as  little  Jack  called  it,  which  fell  in 
neat  gathers  in  front.  The  high  stuffed  sides 
projected,  forming  comfortable  corners  where 
a  languid  head  might  rest. 

Here  the  pale  young  mothers  of  the  family 
"  sat  up  "  for  the  first  time  to  have  their  hair 


174  SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

braided,  or  to  receive  the  visits  of  friends ; 
here,  in  last  illnesses,  a  wan  face  sinking 
back  showed  the  truth  of  the  doctor's  verdict. 

White  dimity,  alternating  with  a  dark-red 
reps  in  winter,  covered  the  seats  of  the  fiddle- 
backed  mahogany  chairs.  White  marseilles 
or  dimity  covers  were  on  the  washstand,  and 
the  tall  bureau  had  a  swinging  glass  that 
rocked  back  against  the  wall  and  showed  little 
Jack  a  picture  of  himself  walking  into  a  steep 
background  of  the  room — a  small  chap  in 
kilts,  with  a  face  somewhat  out  of  drawing 
and  of  a  bluish  color ;  the  floor,  too,  had  a 
queer  slant  like  the  deck  of  a  rolling  vessel. 
But  with  all  its  faults,  this  presentation  of 
himself  in  the  glass  was  an  appearance  much 
sought  after  by  Jack,  even  to  the  climbing  on 
chairs  to  attain  it. 

When  grandmother  came  to  her  home  as  a 
bride,  the  four-poster  was  in  full  panoply  of 
high  puffed  feather-bed,  valance  and  canopy 
and  curtains  of  white  dimity,  "  English " 
blankets,  quilted  silk  comforter,  and  counter- 
pane of  heavy  marseilles,  in  a  bygone  pattern. 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHERS     175 

No  pillow  shams  were  seen  in  the  house ;  its 
fashions  never  changed.  The  best  pillow- 
cases were  plain  linen,  hemstitched,  —  smooth 
as  satin  with  much  use,  as  Jack's  mother  re- 
membered them,  —  and  the  slender  initials,  in 
an  old-fashioned  hand,  above  the  hem,  had 
faded  sympathetically  to  a  pale  yellow-brown. 

Some  of  the  house  linen  had  come  down 
from  great-grandmother's  trousseau.  It  bore 
her  maiden  initials,  E.  B.,  in  letters  that 
were  like  the  marking  on  old  silver  of  that 
time ;  the  gracious  old  Quaker  names,  sacred 
to  the  memory  of  gentle  women  and  good 
housewives  whose  virtues  would  read  like  the 
last  chapter  of  Proverbs,  the  words  of  King 
Lemuel,  the  prophecy  which  his  mother  taught 
him. 

It  was  only  after  the  daughters  of  the  house 
grew  up  and  were  married  and  came  home  on 
visits  with  their  children,  that  the  spare  bed- 
room fell  into  common  use,  and  new  fashions 
intruded  as  the  old  things  wore  out. 

When  Jack's  mother  was  a  child,  it  still 
kept  its  solemn  and  festal  character  of  birth 


176     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

and  marriage  and  death  chamber ;  and  in 
times  less  vital  it  was  set  apart  for  such 
guests  as  the  family  delighted  to  honor. 
Little  girls  were  not  allowed  to  stray  in  there 
by  themselves ;  even  when  sent  to  the  room 
on  errands,  they  went  and  came  with  a  certain 
awe  of  the  empty  room's  cold  dignity. 

But  at  the  semi-annual  house-cleaning, 
when  every  closet  and  bureau  drawer  re- 
signed itself  to  the  season's  intrusive  spirit 
of  research,  the  spare  room's  kindly  mysteries 
were  given  to  the  light.  The  children  could 
look  on  and  touch  and  handle  and  ask  ques- 
tions ;  and  thus  began  their  acquaintance  with 
such  relics  as  had  not  been  consigned  to  the 
darker  oblivion  of  the  garret,  or  suffered 
change  through  the  family  passion  for  "  mak- 
ing over." 

In  the  bottom  drawer  of  the  bureau  was 
the  "body"  of  grandmother's  wedding  gown. 
The  narrow  skirt  had  served  for  something 
useful,  —  a  cradle  quilt,  perhaps,  for  one  of 
the  babies.  Jack  could  have  put  the  tiny 
dress  waist  into  one  of  his  trousers'  pockets 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     177 

with  less  than  their  customary  distention. 
It  was  a  mere  scrap  of  dove-colored  silk,  low 
necked,  and  laced  in  the  back.  Grandmother 
must  have  worn  over  her  shoulders  one  of 
the  embroidered  India  muslin  capes  that 
were  turning  yellow  in  that  same  drawer. 

The  dress  sleeves  were  "leg  o'  mutton," 
but  these,  too,  had  been  sacrificed  in  some 
impulse  of  mistaken  economy. 

There  was  the  high  shell  comb,  not  carved, 
but  a  solid  piece  of  shell  which  the  children 
used  to  hold  up  to  the  light  to  see  the  colors 
glow  like  a  church  window.  There  were  the 
little  square-toed  satin  slippers,  heelless,  with 
flat  laces  that  crossed  over  the  instep ;  and 
there  were  the  flesh-colored  silk  stockings  and 
white  embroidered  wedding  shawl. 

Little  grandmother  must  have  been  rather 
a  gay  Friend ;  she  never  wore  the  dress, 
as  did  her  mother,  who  put  on  the  "plain 
distinguishing  cap "  before  she  was  forty. 
She  dressed  as  one  of  the  "  world's  people," 
but  always  plainly,  with  a  little  distance  be- 
tween herself  and  the  latest  fashion.  She 


178     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

had  a  conscientious  scorn  of  poor  materials. 
Ordinary  self-respect  would  have  prevented 
her  wearing  an  edge  of  lace  that  was  not 
"real,"  or  a  stuff  that  was  not  all  wool,  if 
wool  it  professed  to  be,  or  a  print  that  would 
not  "  wash ; "  and  her  contempt  for  linen 
that  was  part  cotton,  for  silk  that  was  part 
linen,  or  velvet  with  a  "  cotton  back,"  was  of 
a  piece  with  her  truthfulness  and  horror  of 
pretense. 

Among1  the  frivolities  in  the  lower  drawer 

o 

was  a  very  dainty  little  nightcap,  embroidered 
mull  or  some  such  frailness ;  the  children 
used  to  tie  it  on  over  their  short  hair,  framing 
the  round  cheeks  of  ten  and  twelve  years  old. 
It  was  the  envelope  for  sundry  odd  pieces  of 
lace,  "  old  English  thread/'  and  yellow  Va- 
lenciennes, ripped  from  the  necks  and  sleeves 
of  little  frocks  long  outgrown. 

The  children  learned  these  patterns  by 
heart ;  also  the  scrolls  and  garlands  on  certain 
broad  collars  and  cuffs  of  needlework  which 
always  looked  as  if  something  might  be  made 
of  them;  but  nothing  was,  although  Jack's 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S  179 

mamma  was  conscious  of  a  long  felt  want  in 
doll's  petticoats,  which  those  collars  would 
have  filled  to  ecstasy. 

In  that  lower  drawer  were  a  few  things  be- 
longing to  grandmother's  mother,  E.  B.  of 
gracious  memory.  There  were  her  gauze 
neck-handkerchiefs,  and  her  long-armed  silk 
mitts  which  reported  her  a  "  finer  woman  " 
than  any  of  her  descendants  of  the  third  gen- 
eration, since  not  a  girl  of  them  all  could 
show  an  arm  that  would  fill  out  these  cast 
coverings  handsomely  from  wrist  to  biceps. 

And  there  was  a  bundle  of  her  silk  house 
shawls,  done  up  in  one  of  the  E.  B.  towels, 
lovely  in  color  and  texture  as  the  fair,  full 
grandmotherly  throat  they  once  encircled. 
They  were  plain,  self-fringed,  of  every  shade 
of  white  that  was  not  white. 

There  they  lay  and  no  one  used  them ;  and 
after  a  while  it  began  to  seem  a  waste  to  the 
little  girls  who  had  grown  to  be  big  girls. 
The  lightest  minded  of  them  began  to  covet 
those  sober  vanities  for  their  own  adornment. 
Mother's  scruples  were  easily  smiled  away; 


180     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

so  the  old  Quaker  shawls  came  forth  and  took 
their  part  in  the  young  life  of  the  house  — 
a  gayer  part,  it  would  be  safe  to  say,  than 
was  ever  theirs  upon  the  blessed  shoulders  of 
E.  B.  One  or  two  of  them  were  made  into 
plaited  waists  to  be  worn  with  skirts  and  belts 
of  the  world's  fashion.  And  one  soft  cream- 
white  shawl  wrapped  little  Jack  on  his  first 
journey  in  this  world;  and  afterward  on 
many  journeys,  much  longer  than  that  first 
one  "from  the  blue  room  to  the  brown." 

No  advertised  perfumes  were  used  in  grand- 
mother's house,  yet  the  things  in  the  drawers 
had  a  faint  sweet  breath  of  their  own. 
Especially  it  lingered  about  those  belongings 
of  her  mother's  time  —  the  odor  of  seclusion, 
of  bygone  cleanliness  and  household  purity. 

The  spare  bedroom  was  at  its  gayest  in 
summer-time,  when,  after  the  daughters  of 
the  house  grew  up,  young  company  was  ex- 
pected. Swept  and  dusted  and  soberly  ex- 
pectant, it  waited,  like  a  wise  but  prudent 
virgin,  with  candles  unlighted  and  shutters 
darkened.  Its  very  colors  were  cool  and  de- 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     181 

corous,  white  and  green  and  dark  mahogany 
polish,  door  knobs  and  candlesticks  gleaming, 
andirons  reflected  in  the  dull-red  shine  of  the 
hearth. 

After  sundown,  if  friends  were  expected 
by  the  evening  boat,  the  shutters  were 
fastened  back,  and  the  green  Venetian  blinds 
raised,  to  admit  the  breeze  and  a  view  of  the 
garden  and  the  grass  and  the  plashing  foun- 
tain. Each  girl  hostess  visited  the  room  in 
turn  on  a  last,  characteristic  errand,  —  one 
with  her  hands  full  of  roses,  new  blown  that 
morning ;  another  to  remove  the  sacrificed 
leaves  and  broken  stems  which  the  rose- 
gatherer  had  forgotten ;  and  the  mother  last 
of  all  to  look  about  her  with  modest  pride, 
peopling  the  room  with  the  friends  of  her 
own  girlhood,  to  be  welcomed  there  no  more. 

Then,  when  the  wagon  drove  up,  what  a 
joyous  racket  in  the  hall ;  and  what  content 
for  the  future  in  the  sound  of  heavy  trunks 
carried  upstairs ! 

If  only  one  girl  guest  had  come,  she  must 
have  her  particular  friend  of  the  house  for  a 


182     SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S 

bedfellow ;  and  what  in  all  the  world  did 
they  not  talk  of,  lying  awake  half  the  summer 
night  in  pure  extravagance  of  joy  —  while 
the  fountain  plashed  and  paused,  and  the 
soft  wind  stirred  in  the  cherry-trees,  and  in 
the  moonlit  garden  overblown  roses  dropped 
their  petals  on  the  wet  box-borders. 

Visitors  from  the  city  brought  with  them  — 
besides  new  books,  new  songs,  sumptuous 
confectionery  and  the  latest  ideas  in  dress  — 
an  odor  of  the  world;  something  complex 
rich  and  strange  as  the  life  of  the  city  itself. 
It  spread  its  spell  upon  the  cool,  pure  atmo- 
sphere of  the  Quaker  home,  and  set  the  light 
hearts  beating  and  the  young  heads  dreaming. 

In  after  years  came  the  Far  West,  with  its 
masculine  incense  of  camps  and  tobacco  and 
Indian  leather  and  soft-coal  smoke.  It  ar- 
rived in  company  with  several  pieces  of  sin- 
gularly dusty  male  baggage ;  but  it  had  not 
come  to  stay. 

For  a  few  days  of  confusion  and  bustle  it 
pervaded  the  house,  and  then  departed,  on  the 
"Long  Trail,"  taking  little  Jack  and  his 


SPARE  BEDROOM  AT  GRANDFATHER'S     183 

mother  away.  And  in  the  chances  and 
changes  of  the  years  that  followed,  they  were 
never  again  to  sleep  in  the  spare  bedroom  at 
grandfather's. 


BLECTROTYPED  AND  PRINTED 
BY  H.  O.   HOUGHTON  AND  CO. 


@fre  fttocrflfre 


CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  U.  S.  A. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


INTER  MRpARY 


LOAN 
440H 


APR     219 


& 


U.C.BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


(10^133^127 


M13689 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


ELDER 
"sHEPA 


